jeff@rtech.UUCP (Jeff Lichtman) (09/09/85)
All the talk about corporal punishment of children reminds me of a childhood
experience. I was a pretty good kid in most ways; that is, I didn't cause
trouble, talk back to my parents or my teachers, beat people up, throw rocks,
etc. My main problem was that I was a lazy student.
One of my fifth grade teachers was Mr. Dennen. Once I was drawing in his class
instead of paying attention, and he threw a dictionary at me. It wasn't a
little pocket dictionary, either: it was one of those thick, grade-school
dictionaries that they bound in red cloth. He threw it at me, and if the kid
next to me hadn't shouted "Watch out!" it would have hit me in the head. As it
was, I ducked, and it hit me on the shoulder. It hurt, but I wasn't injured.
I was furious, because even at that age I knew that I could have really been
hurt, and that it was a ridiculously severe punishment for what I had done.
I didn't say a word about it to my parents, though (until I had graduated from
college).
Now, I know how Mr. Dennen went about doing this, because I saw him do it to
other kids before he did it to me. Once he noticed that a kid wasn't paying
attention, he would hush the whole class. He would pick up the dictionary
and then point to the misbehaving student. He would get a big smile on his
face, and using silent signals, he would make it obvious what he was planning
to do. He would take a couple of big, looping practice swings, and then
let it fly. His whole manner was to try to get the rest of the class to see
the incident as a big joke. In effect, he was protecting himself by turning
the rest of us into co-conspirators. I don't know whether this was his concious
intent, but this was the effect.
This was not the only cruel thing I had seen Mr. Dennen do. He used to pick on
Ricky Schoepe, a good kid who had a habit of talking too much in class. Once
Mr. Dennen wanted to punish Ricky for talking, so he stuffed paper in Ricky's
mouth, taped his mouth shut, and locked him in the closet. I saw Mr. Dennen do
similar things to Ricky so many times that it seemed part of a routine. He
always made sure that the whole business was extremely amusing to the other
kids.
Mr. Dennen had another class in the afternoon. A friend of mine told me that
Mr. Dennen always picked on Bob O'Neal in that class, the way he picked on
Ricky in the morning. He told me that Mr. Dennen once made Bob sit on a chair
on top of a flat table, then yanked the chair out from under him.
I think most of us kids had a vague idea that something was wrong, but evidently
none of us ever complained about him to our parents or to the school
authorities. It's possible that someone did complain but wasn't believed.
I do know that I didn't complain, and I know why: it never occurred to me that
Mr. Dennen didn't have the right to throw a dictionary at me, and I also didn't
want to attract attention to the fact that I had misbehaved.
Mr. Dennen was by far the most abusive teacher I ever had, and it's true that
most teachers are pretty good. But I remember enough of my childhood to realize
that some teachers are petty bullies who enter the profession so they can lord
it over children, because children can't fight back. This can take many forms:
obvious physical abuse, psychological bullying, and use of sanctioned methods of
punishment (such as spanking). This is one reason that it disturbs me to read
statements like, "If my child ever gets spanked in school, he (or she) has
another one coming from me." Using this logic, my parents should have thrown
a dictionary at me when I got home from school that day.
Children are as deserving of justice as anyone else, yet receive it less often.
This is because they are weak, both physically (I'd like Mr. Dennen to try his
tricks with me now!) and intellectually. They can't defend themselves, and
so need help. If a child receives a second unjust spanking on top of a first,
he or she won't just suffer humiliation and a little physical pain: the child
will learn that the ultimate figures of authority (the parents) will blindly
take sides against him or her and disregard justice. I believe that this
realization, that one can't trust one's own parents, is more damaging than
the physical punishment.
George Orwell wrote an essay called "Such, Such Were The Joys," in which he
describes his childhood in an English public school. In it he talks about what
goes on in the mind of a child in the face of adult bullying. I think it's
worth a trip to the library to read this essay, because Orwell, unlike most
adults, remebered what it was like to be young.
P.S. I heard a few years ago that Mr. Dennen had been fired. I'm not sure what
led up to this, and I hope that it didn't take a serious physical injury
to finally expose him.
--
Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
aka Swazoo Koolak
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