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What cyclotic said does sound hard to believe, but there were different times in our past.

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.

(Short side trip that is related to this: years later, when I was in the US Navy, they showed us a training film called "The Man From LOX". This link I have provided is well worth watching for entertainment value alone as a cultural milestone. Those of us who saw "The Man From LOX" over the years as young sailors usually remember it vividly (as many Freepers do when I mention it) because it is simply the most un-politically correct training film ever made, geared towards young men. It could never be shown today, complete with one large breasted girl trying to convince the conscientious young sailor in charge of the liquid oxygen to quit his work and party with her (prominently showcasing her boobs) but the sailor declines with regret but conviction while saying "If I don't treat this LOX right, the Safety Officer is going to have my ass!" usually to the laughing and jeers in the watching sailors denouncing his manhood, etc. Near the end, after he puts everything in its right place, the Safety Officer appears, and as she releases her long blonde hair, with lascivious sexual licking of her lips, she says "Sailor...I'm going to have your ass!" Great entertainment for bored sailors who think they are invincible. Then, at the very end, for seven seconds, they show a horribly burned man minutes before he died. Not faked. And every single young, irreverent, and invincible teenage sailor watching, paid rapt attention for seven seconds as the lesson was burned into their brains: "Don't mess with Liquid Oxygen". Few ever forgot it.

I tell this story, because Mr. Stauffer knew full well the effect of raising his mutilated hand up in the air in front of the eyes of a bunch of 13 year old boys, as the Navy knew full well the effect that seven seconds at the end of "The Man From LOX" film would have. As I grew into a man and thought of things, this was one of the lessons I comprehended fully: Sometimes you have to hit young men over the head to make a lesson stick. And if it important, a good whack over the head is worth 10,000 words.

Back to Mr. Stauffer's 7th grade shop class...we were clowning around in the shop one day, and I had a package of those ink cartridges that you used to have to put into the fountain pens. I recall you had insert them, and press down a little lever or something to puncture them. Full of black ink.

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.