Bullying teachers can be a two way thing.

We put a sheet of brown paper inside the lid of the piano in the music room so that as soon as the teacher started to play and the hammers struck the strings it sounded like a honkey-tonk.

The opening bars of The Ash Grove had us convulsed in giggles.

She wasn't amused......class detention!

For me it was the dinner ladies. I remember kids being force fed. One particular incident was when a boy wouldn't eat his lunch, he was sick on his plate and they went and got another plate and force spooned it into his mouth again. I told my mum, she went up the school and told the head that if one of these witches ever did it to me she'd do 20 times worse to them.

It stopped and they were sacked.

I loved school too but we were scared of the prefects never mind the teachers and the classes had no disruption because of that. There are no sanctions that quell disruptive pupils now so a lot of time is spent on low level disruption. And social media is the pits for teachers and NHS staff now as people will complain and be insulting about staff if they don't get exactly what they want. People are named and its very upsetting.

One of our maths teachers was Polish - this was in the late 50s and 60s. Some of the boys drew a swastika on the board before she came in. I was so naive that I had no idea of its significance. When the teacher came in she went berserk - and who can blame her? - who knows what she had been through?

Also there was a rather wimpy male RI teacher who foolishly persisted in asking members of the class to read passages from the bible - the lads would have pre-picked one of the "dirty" bits and would read it with relish instead of the passage that they had been asked to read. This poor teacher had no idea at all how to deal with it - by not asking people to read for instance or by saying "You seem to find that passage interesting - could you explain why and we can all talk about it." This poor man was literally carted away from school in an ambulance by the men in white coats - appalling.

My history teacher Mr Haggerty (nice man) never had any problems controlling his classes as he made every lesson so very interesting. Even topics as boring as the South Sea Bubble stick in my mind. He was a natural teacher who treated each and every one of his pupils with courtesy and patience and coped admirably with the occasional joker. No requirement for punishment in his class as he held everyone's rapt attention. There were some great teachers!

We had a young French teacher who we completely controlled. He was lovely but so easily distracted, a question asked at the right time would lead him off on a lengthy story that filled the whole lesson. It was his first year teaching and I think he toughened up a bit after that, so maybe we did him some good.

And class sizes were much bigger in those days. There were more than 40 of us in my Primary school class.
My memories of my teachers are mostly very good. I loved school.

Yes I read that thread Jane and remembered that most teachers were kind and helpful. Read somewhere recently that just one disruptive pupil in a class can have a long lasting effect on the education of the others.

The school that my GC are at had a emergency parents meeting because they where getting a bad press from social media.

If the cap fits........

I know they are are cruel. They were rotten things to do. I put this thread up after reading all the awful things teachers did and said to children. It can be a two way thing. Children have been left devastated by things teachers said and did.

I find those posts very cruel. Who knows how those young teachers fared.

My son's class were no better. Before a certain elderly rather shy male teacher came in one boy would hide. Throughout the class he'd bleat like a sheep gradually louder and louder. All the boys would completely ignore it and, if asked if they'd heard it, look at the poor teacher as though he was mad. Poor old chap couldn't get back to the staffroom fast enough. Awww.

That made me laugh out loud- I agree we were horrors also.