Posted on 05/03/2021 12:03:50 PM PDT by Red Badger
What year was this?
In my grade school, the 8th grade shop class made a present for the Phys Eds Teacher. They even painted it in school colors with the words ‘Board of Education’.
Some of us came out a lot more ‘educated’ than others.
(thank you sir - may I have another!)
jimjohn - OUT
The teacher literally picked up a desk behind you???
The kid who caught the book was stalking.
Who was the kid stalking? Why were you playing "catch" with a textbook?
The teacher asked for my textbook and said “watch this” then let it fly.
Something about this story is hard to figure out, but then I never took German in school.
1980 or 81
Took = sat down in
Stalking = talking. Typo
Let it fly = threw the book across the room
You’ve got no experience with catholic schools do you?
I do and believe the story.
Keep digging
my JR High Wood Shop class made paddles for the School boys VP and the local scout master, both had a lot of holes in them..
You’ve got no experience with catholic schools do you?
Six years.
Now what, Carnac?
Just saying. Your mileage may vary.
First grade teacher nun in my school made a kid lick milk off the floor he’d spilled. That’s not the child abuse she went to jail for.
Parish priest was one of the first in america to die of AIDS.
School priest also did time for sexual abuse.
Knockout is just par for the course.
Keep diggingHe believes his own BS, it appears.
Just saying.
You're not Carnac after all. You are Forrest Gump.
Intimidated by authority- cultural thing.
That is my bet.
In his defense, I will say this: It is hard for a lot of people today to accept that we were paddled freely in my school, and that when we were, we were petrified our parents would find out because if they found out, it wasn't going to be "I'm calling the school to get to the bottom of this! They have no right to spank my kid..."
It was going to be "What did you do to deserve it? And if you lie, you are going to get a worse licking than that teacher gave you!"
I am sure some people are horrified by corporal punishment, and I am not an unequivocal advocate of it because there are people out there who are not suited to responsibly delivering corporal punishment, and...there is judgement involved on when to appropriately administer it. Some people don't have good judgement on when to deliver it, and how much.
I am certain that people think I am spouting BS when I tell this story about my 7th grade shop teacher:
Mr. Stauffer, was my 7th grade shop teacher at George Dewey, and we all thought the guy walked on water.
What a wonderful guy. Everyone loved him, including me.
He wore those black plastic glasses that, in the military, we used to call BCD glasses (Birth Control Device glasses!) and was the tennis, basketball, volleyball, and wrestling coach.
He also had a funny thing he would do when he wanted to get your attention because you were clowning around. He did a thing called an "Indian Burn", where he would grab your skinny adolescent wrist in his large rough, calloused hands, and slowly twist his hands back and forth while he spoke gently to you...the friction and pulling of the fine hair would make your wrist burn like mad!
He had lost two fingers on the pinky side of his right hand to a table saw, and on our first day of class, before he spoke any words to us for the first time, he silently held his right hand in the air for us to see. He then proceeded to tell us how it happened, and lectured us on shop safety.
Because I was an absolutely brain dead 13 year old, I was sticking those small plastic ink cylinders in one of those big wood vises (that have wood where the steel teeth would normally be, and you can put a piece of lumber into it without ruining it) I would slowly tighten it, and like a balloon being overinflated to the point where it would explode, the tension rising in all the onlookers with each puff of breath, I would slowly and carefully tighten the vise to produce the same effect. Then, "Pop!" and the ink would spurt and drip to the floor as the guys watching laughed with glee.
I had already done a couple of them which made a mess, and as I was in the process of preparing another one, I didn't notice that the laughter had stopped, and Mr. Stauffer quietly came up unseen behind me, gently grasped my right hand, and as he spoke in a soft level voice to me about the safety procedures in shop class, he placed my fingers into that large wood vise and began to slowly tighten it down. I don't remember exactly what he said, but it got pretty tight on my fingers to the point where I got a little afraid. It wasn't painful, but...it was uncomfortable to the point it was starting to hurt.
Mr. Stauffer wasn't going to crush my hand. But he seemed to know just exactly how tight he could make it, enough to make me nervous, yet not cause any damage. And he made his point.
But can you imagine that today? It would be front page Internet news. They would be reading about it in France and Singapore. Mr. Stauffer would be fired and have charges leveled against him, there would be a big payout by the school...
Sigh. I sure am glad I didn't grow up today. I have no doubt they would have set me up with an IV Ritalin drip. Back then, they just paddled you and let you grow up, warts and all.
Or put your fingers in a vise.
Oh good gravy. The schools would be much better places if the teachers and staff were still allowed to apply the Board of Education. It hurts, but there is no lasting damage and the child usually learns to avoid the behavior that led to the paddling. I know it worked on me. And when I got paddled at school, I got it again when I got home.
We just laughed at the ones that used a yardstick or a pointer. That just stung a little. The wooden paddles with the holes drilled to reduce drag hurt. I once went a week with the impressions left by the holes on my backside - but I never acted up in that class again.
Speed holes!
Great post and great video (The man from LOX). Times are definitely different now than when I was young and in school, and judging from the video times were a bit different then than what I experienced in the 70s and 80s in school. I can relate more to the earlier times than the PC crap of these days. I vaguelly remember one of my shop class teachers doing a similar thing to us on our first day, sort of a scared straight introduction and it made an impression. Thanks for the trip down memory lane as well rlmorel.
Same here!......................
You are most welcome...that was my point in that post, that...something that seems completely outlandish and not at all probable to the common ‘sensibilities’ of today, were, not that long ago (mere decades) existent.
Granted, the parochial schools that I went to were generally populated by nuns (I never remember seeing a priest, except for an occasional classroom visit for some reason) but I have heard that boys who went to Catholic schools that prominently feature male priests were subject to a degree of physical violence even to the point of sadism (Probably the Jesuits...Ha, my dad went to a Catholic college run by Jesuits, and my mother really disliked them...when the subject came up, her coffee cup in one hand and a long-ashed cigarette in the other, her volatile Mediterranean eyes would flash with anger and she would mutter “Those damn Jesuits!”)
One of the things I enjoy about a forum like this (when it doesn’t make my non-existent hair stand on end in alarm and anger) is the references that our fellow Freepers make to various (often forgotten) things. That memory of my Mom is one of them.
I like that...:)
When I was in 7th grade woodshop we had contest to see who could make the best paddle for a science teacher who had no problem with using it. 3ft. long w/air holes. The shop teacher considered it a good way for us to hone our skills.
Ah...the good old days.
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