I don't think it is surprising we see such dysfunctional behavior. It is not normal to treat children this way. In fact, I call it abusive. In more than 150,000 years of human existence we have never done this to children. Our human ancestors, if they could see the huge, modern, factory-like schools ( that look very much like minimum security prisons) that children must endure every day, would be blinking in surprise and confusion that we would do this to children
The author of the study writes that 45% of teachers admitted to bullying. I conclude that the actual incidence is higher.
Geez, about everybody on this thread thinks they have been mistreated and abused by their teachers. I don’t know what age people we are talking about but kids today are the most spoiled brats ever. If the teacher looks at them cross eyed, they think they’ve been abused. Grow up people, it’s a character building process. It won’t hurt your precious little self esteem.
I will respect public school teachers when their schools compete on a level playing field with all other schools. As long as they oppose vouchers, I know they are opposed to a fair competition and to parental freedom in education. The current system bullies parents. Why should I be surprised by the presence of individual bullies, when the whole system is based on coercion?
What the hell, leave it up the children if they want to be there or not. Let the parents worry about it.
I guess we need more bullying teachers.
I had a bully teacher in the fifth grade. This was around 1971 or so. and ‘corporal punishment’ (paddling) was still the accepted form of punishment. This guy grew furious that he couldn’t get any reaction at all from me after laying the wood to me for various, in hindsight, minor crap.
It really enraged the guy.
Flash forward to 1979. I’m home on leave, and instead of being just over five feet tall, and 100 or so pounds, I’m 6’2’ and 200.
He was standing in the driveway of a friends house I stopped by. It took him a minute to recognize me.
The look of FEAR that went onto his face, and stayed there til he ‘had to go’ a few minutes later was priceless.
(I just smiled and said ‘Damn Tom, you are much smaller than I remember from school....’)
Sounds like my ninth grade Algebra teacher, my first year in (a Catholic) high school. (No, she was not a nun.) I was an A student in her class, but I was very shy. And that woman constantly humiliated me in front of the whole class. Even the other students in class were upset about it. For the life of me, I cannot remember exactly what she said to me. But other students remembered it for years. Fifteen years later, I met up with one of those students again, and she was still talking about it. She said she used to go home and tell her sister what was being said to me by the teacher in class, and they would cry about it together. I told her, I don't really remember. But I guess that teacher must've been bad if two other people were crying about it... lol.
All I remember is that I became very depressed; I started skipping school, and my grades plummeted to D's and F's the last half of the year. I don't think I passed Algebra. My folks switched me to public school because back then a "60" was an "F" in my Catholic school but a "D" in the public school. And let me tell you about the public school they switched me to: Even the teachers were frightened there. And I had to take the schoolbus from hell. I learned a lot there, though, like most importantly how to scare people off by calling their bluff using the most obscene words imaginable.
I wish homeschooling had been an option back then.