Bad experiences in primary schools in the early 2000s?
Idk if this is an experience unique to me and my primary school mates because it seems like crude punishment and treatment of children in the 2000s have already mostly died down but I am curious to know if any of yall have had traumatic experiences around the same time.
For me, I had multiple teachers who would beat the kids; though not in the most intense way, but they still did. Sometimes they’d use our own rule to smack our palms or the 1m ruler at the front of the class.
I’ve also had instances of teachers pulling me up by my sleeve to scold and threaten me and even had some teachers smacking me on the butt.
Not forgetting the arguably worse punishment that had a greater mental impact on me – throwing my books into the trash because we didn’t know how to do the work, throwing our bags out of the class because we were “stupid”, having students called stupid and useless, being told we will never make it to our dream school and to stop dreaming… the list goes on.
Has anyone experienced this?
Netizens’ comments
- So it happened till 2000s. My primary days were the 90s. In today’s context, the teachers back then were rather sadistic. Many were verbally and physically abusive, more so in primary than secondary schools, because pupils were younger and more easily taken advantage of. In secondary schools, some students might start to fight back.
The 1m wooden ruler smack on the hand was a common sight. I also had a crazy teacher who punishes students by asking them to pack their bags to the brim, with everything they had, then brings the bag to the staircase, and throws everything out of the bag down the stairs, he calls it “pasar malam”. His iconic phrase “YOU(name) PASAR MALAM!”. After that, he would ask the student to pick and pack everything up, and does it again. And simultaneously, he would hurl verbal abuse so loud the whole f*cking building could hear. The authority people back then love to be egomaniacs. BTW he was also having an affair with another female teacher, she often comes to visit our class, and they constantly behave inappropriately in front of our us. Sometimes during one of her visits, they would suddenly disappear for like 20-30mins together, need I say more.
To add, he often sleeps in class too, sometimes some students talk too loudly and woke him up, he would punish the student. The worst thing was, he got promoted to HOD after our class left for secondary school. - Was in primary school in the 90s.
Bunch of things that probably don’t (and can’t) happen anymore. Not traumatic for me as I was never on the receiving end.
– Public caning during assembly.
– “Recess detention”: no recess for a month, stay in the teacher’s room and watch all your classmates eat.
– Teachers throwing things towards you (I guess purposely missing, just to warn you).
– Getting tossed out of class… literally. Teacher would pick up your bag and throw it out of the door and ask you follow it. - Not all teachers are bad but TBH there are plenty of teachers who seem to have anger management issues. Always screaming, yelling, raising voices at students and having some weird punishments and some even nagging and lecturing the students for pretty much the whole class period time.
What’s up with some of these teachers? I honestly think way too many of these types of teachers really have issues in regulating their emotions. Weird punishments (ineffective, just ostracising and plain humiliation is their objective) include throwing student’s textbooks out of the window and down the building (hello, high-rise littering??), making students stand throughout the lesson, stand outside the classroom, throwing their books into the dustbin, telling students they’ll never make it in life and will never amount to anything. For goodness sake, they’re supposed to be moulding the lives of students in a positive way, not a negative way. What a way to break young impressionable minds at a vulnerable age.
And they’re power-tripping. They’re in a position of power and authority above a student. A student Vs a teacher. That kind of power dynamic. And hence, some of these teachers think that they’re the boss and they can do whatever they want. Seriously power tripping, anger management issues 🤷🏻♀️ and a lot of them are probably bringing all their household emotional greviences and bringing it to their workplace (the school, classroom) and throwing their emotions out at the students.
Oh and don’t forget the open racism and even elitist mindsets that these teachers would propagate. The teachers will tell the students from better performing classes not to hang out and mix with students from the last few, less academically strong classes.
For reference, I was born in the early 90s and my upper primary years and secondary school years was in the early 2000s (everything before 2010).