Chan Gibbon

With respect, I disagree.

When we were beaten in Portugal by Portuguese teachers, the teachers were frequently wrong to do so (Professor Amando developed a bit of a nasty taste for it, too...), (... on a sidenote: my mother was a teacher there so I never got touched! Funny that!). When my older English friends talk about the days when they were beaten in England with canes, that was very frequently wrong (I know one old man who still finds his unprosperous roots hard to talk about). And I believe that the same goes for Thai students in relation to their teachers - no teacher should be deemed infallible.

If punishments are too severe and too frequently dealt then an adult might crush a child's spirit (and I don't mean this in a religious sense). I did once know a child who stopped drawing pictures (and he was a rather good artist, too) due to having been cruelly ridiculed in class. I was there when it happened. It was Dona Fatima from the Porches School of the Algarve, Portugal, who had long had the reputation for being a bully. None of us have forgotten her.

I have been legally accepted into Thailand for work and I have been legally accepted by Thai employers to fulfill my role as a teacher. I realise that Thai teachers are usually given precedent when it comes to discipline, but when it's my classroom, shouldn't it be my rules?!

I don't mean for any of this to sound rhetorical. This is merely my present standpoint.