In fact, in this state, a male teacher was recently deregistered (his registration was restored on appeal when he demonstrated he’d been badly advised during his training) because he failed to intervene physically when girls were fighting because he didn’t want to touch them. Not only are teachers allowed to touch students, but it’s also mandated in some cases.
Laymen often think teachers can’t touch kids anymore, and that might be true someplace – I can certainly believe that in very litigious America, there are places like that, but it’s not true here.
Back to my point though – not all teachers in the 1960s were as bad as you paint them, Bob. In fact, I can think of very, very few who were as bad as that. Your experiences might well be different, but they don’t constitute the total human experience.