Recently a school teacher was fired and arrested for slapping a child in her class. It brought to mind the time a teacher slapped me.
Years ago at a oneroom schoolhouse, some of us were talking while our teacher was working with the smaller kids. She warned us that the next one caught talking would be punished. I didn’t say a word after that, but my teacher thought I did.
When she came to my desk I looked up at her, probably belligerently, and said it wasn’t me. She told me to go outside on the front porch. She followed me, and after shutting the door, proceeded to “talk” to me.
I kept insisting it wasn’t me that had talked, and she slapped me. I think it surprised us both, and I’m sure she regretted it as soon as she walked back in the classroom.
When I got home and told my father, he didn’t go to the School Board or even confront the teacher. He just took me out of school and sent me to a boarding school, which I loved. I quickly made friends.
Though teachers spanked kids with switches, at the boarding school they mostly used talk to shame us. One night some of the girls planned to sneak out a window and meet boys. I took my blanket and pillow and lay down in the dry bathtub. I quickly fell asleep. When the time came to leave, the girls tried to wake me, but I was too sleepy. They got caught, and were punished.
My oldest son Dan got many whippings in his younger grades. He always came home and told me.
I finally said, “The next time you tell me you got whipped in school, I’m going to spank you when you get home.” He either never got spanked again, or didn’t tell me. The only time I nearly confronted the school about discipline waswhen my “good” son Bill got spanked in junior high.
His teacher said the next one who said a word would get a spanking. Bill hadn’t heard her, so he continued talking, and was punished.
I don’t know when it became illegal to whip children in school, but grownups don’t dare touch a child today, and there is little respect for authority. My youngest sister is a teacher and laments the lack of respect. She teaches in high school, and wrote: “I deal with back talk, stealing and cheating almost daily. I’m doing my best to hang in there! I know God has me there for a purpose.”
Maybe spankings weren’t so bad after all.
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Editor’s note: Marie Wiggin Putman, and her husband, Jerry, live in Little Flock. A native of Benton County, she writes a monthly column for the Westside Eagle Observer. She and her husband are members of the Pea Ridge Historical Society.
Opinion, Pages 4 on 11/07/2012