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Tough Teachers

Entry 172, on 2005-05-17 at 14:07:01 (Rating 2, Politics)

The latest political furore which has erupted here is over the behavior of a member of parliament, who was previously a teacher. This person is a local MP and taught at some schools my wife has worked at, so it feels a bit more personal to me.

The claim is that he treated some previous pupils in a rather brutal way: allegedly one caning drew blood, and on another occasion the claim is he forced a tennis ball into a pupil's mouth and taped his hands so he couldn't remove it.

Its debatable whether this really happened, especially because we will have elections here soon and political point scoring is currently out of control. And because this was supposed to have happened twenty years ago, its difficult to prove or disprove it. Of course, throw enough mud and some of it is going to stick.

Even if it is true, it happened in the past when standards were different. I remember when I was at school discipline was a lot more "direct" than it is now. Also, several ex pupils have since made an appearance and commented on what a great teacher he used to be, so there seems to be a significant amount of debate.

Either way, I hope that when it comes to voting, the public will punish the people who have no positive contribution to make and simply spend their time criticising the government on fringe issues which have little relevance to the current political conditions (although I do accept that being associate education minister does raise the relevance of the claims in this case).

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