My Secondary school was Grey court School Ham.
This is in 1979 andthis was a time where although corporal punishment was being phased out it the threat of being whacked still hung over our head, thus it was still very much a part of school life.
Of course there were teacher who were fair and the were others who were completely sadistic arseoles (and I am saying that now because I can without fear of retribution).
It has always seemed that the teachers with the worse reputations for being sadistic and brutal (other than the cane wielding headmasters of yesteryear) were the Physical Education teachers.
Our old P.E. teacher “Mr Tewksbury”, although he was not the most sadistic teacher in our school, (that award went to “Mr Duke” Head of science) however he did play a very good second best. From the first P.E. lesson we ever had with him, threats of being whacked with a gym shoe or the slipper as they called it were always being made. I mean to say throughout my first few years at my secondary school I think I counted one lesson where we were not all threatened. His favourite trick was to intimidate the pupils, take boys to his office where he would shout them down like an army drill sergeant and wave a bloody trainer in their face occasionally whacking it on the table for effect. There were many rumours about this kind hearted decent living gentleman. One of these was the fact he was having it away with the Drama teacher, the other one was the fact he had holes in his
tracksuit bottoms so he could play with himself whilst looking at the boys in the shower. Mr Tewksbury must have intimidated a fair number of pupils over his sixteen or so years as a P.E. teacher and he was
eventually ordered to resign or be sacked. Once again it only took them sixteen years to realise another suspect teacher.
Now if Mr Tewksbury was a little bit of a tyrant Mr Duke was a bloody sadist.
Like our Mr Tewksbury Mr Duke also helped out in the P.E department and slippered boys with full studded rugby boots.
Mr Duke had come fresh faced from teaching in an Detention Centre (something along the line of “Scum” if you have ever seen the film) and had decided to bring many of his disciplinary methods with him. This Included, punching pupils on the head, kicking the pupils, shouting at the top of his voice, Verbal humiliation, and of course caning boys as hard as he possibly could.
On two occasions I saw him pick ona boy who had a severe weight problem, the boy was referred to as a fat slob, the funniest thing was when the boys mother came up the school though we never did get to know the outcome. He was also my form teacher for my last two years and I was so scared that I wanted to transfer to another school.
However my mother came up the school after which me and Mr Duke became friends, well not the best offriends but he kept off my back. I suppose that could be seen as a little bit of a contradiction in
Personally I am against corporal punishment. I think at the end of the day too much went on that was unchecked and led to abuse from people in authority.