Schoolboy discipline!

Schoolboy discipline!

Do you remember the old teachers and the discipline we had?
It was far worse than a good hiding from your Mother or your Dad,
For a caning from your teacher was designed to do one thing,
To punish your transgression, and to make your fingers sting.

‘Two hundred lines’, they gave you, in a curt offhanded way,
And to write them out in repetition would blow your mind away,
Handy with a ruler, they could rap the knuckles hard,
As they sneakily attacked us with all nastiness unbarred.

Throw a blackboard rubber, in a heavy-handed way,
Lift you by your sideboards, till your temple hair gave way,
Blacken us and bruise us, dent our teenage pride,
Kill our rebel anger before it was born inside.

Did it work? – Well you tell me, for I don’t really know,
Would I have been a worse man, would I know which way to go?
Was violence on such a scale a necessary thing?
Or could there be another way to clip a teenage wing?

Our parents put all trust in them to teach us for the best,
To learn us how to read and write, and pass a written test,
To teach us of the basic things, to learn us how to grow,
But to do it with such masochism? Well, – I don’t really know!

Mick