ASIDE from the fact that, in all probability, a jocular conversation has been sensationalised and the teachers should have known better than to share such remarks on social (or perhaps that should be antisocial) media, get a grip (Content of teachers’ shocking WhatsApp messages revealed, Feb 14).
Go back to my childhood in the 40s and 50s, and recall coming home from school with a bruise where the low flying blackboard duster hit you, or weals from the six strokes of the tawse for persistently looking out of the window, or the painful ear from by being dragged to the “Heidie’s” office for arguing back, or the bladder strain caused by being kept in at playtime and therefore not getting to the toilet when you should have. Remember that many of us kept such information to ourselves because the best we could expect by way of sympathy was “Ye must’ve deserved it,” or, worse, a supplementary thick ear.
READ MORE: Parents ‘should have been told’ about teachers' disturbing WhatsApps
Of course the way children were treated then was beyond condemnation, from the physical punishment of one who protested injustice to the persecution of those who were dyslexic in an era where it was obviously believed that you could hammer education into a child with judicious use of brutality.
On the other hand, in an age where eight-year-olds know their rights and can tell the police to f*** off with impunity, perhaps the pendulum has, as usual, swung too far?
If a bricklayer drops one on his foot he can let off steam by swearing at it, and there can hardly be a driver in the land who has not cursed out the stupid cretin in the car that just cut them up. Nobody has ever got through life without ever wishing they were somewhere else.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon's resignation one year on - what's next for the SNP?
Teaching is potentially an extremely frustrating calling. I never taught children but I did teach adults, and I could not count the number who should have been strangled at birth. I have every sympathy with those who discuss among themselves the frustrations of their mutual employment – after all, who else would understand? Maybe they did make themselves a target by doing it on WhatsApp instead of face-to-face, but isn’t that platform meant to be end-to-end encrypted? Who breached their privacy by revealing the content? Who among their friends is not a friend they should cultivate?
I have a log burning stove. In the days when I was still vulnerable to the frustrations of human idiocy I would, occasionally, picture a face on a log as the splitting maul hurtled towards it. I never took the maul to work and none of the teachers actually stabbed a kid with a word, never mind a pencil.
Leave them alone! It is bad enough that they are underpaid, disrespected and unappreciated without some holier-than-thou politically correct self-appointed saint going after them for their imagined release of frustration,
Les Hunter
Lanark
1.5 million terrified and starving Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, after being bombed out of their homes in the north and told by Israel to flee south. Israel is preventing aid from entering Gaza, using starvation as a war weapon which is a war crime. Now it’s preparing to resume the slaughter.
The UK has admitted the RAF has sent 48 military aircraft to Israel since October and has flown 65 spy missions over Gaza from its Cyprus base since December. Nine Israeli air force planes have taken off and landed in the UK, including from Glasgow, since the conflict started.
READ MORE: David Pratt: Benjamin Netanyahu's leadership is testing global patience
The UK is currently providing training to six Israeli military officers on UK soil. In January, Israeli forces bombed a UK medical charity in Gaza in the “safe zone” of Al-Mawasi, injuring four UK doctors. Israeli F-16 jets use equipment made by UK firms BAE Systems and GKN, but UK ministers have rejected calls to halt arms sales to Israel.
Nicaragua has written to say that it’s considering referring the UK to the International Court of Justice for complicity in genocide.
Starmer’s Labour has withdrawn support from a candidate who dared to criticise Israel. No member of Labour’s shadow cabinet has backed calls for a ceasefire and an end to the bloodbath that has killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians.
Not surprisingly, the UK ignored the Scottish Parliament’s November vote for an immediate ceasefire.
Scotland’s international voice has been silenced, a consequence of our subservient status within the failing UK. It’s time we found the courage to restore it.
Leah Gunn Barrett
Edinburgh
THE first sea trials of a delayed ferry should give all SNP supporters a sigh of relief. These two vessels have given the Tory sewage media more ammunition than Hitler had. Here’s hoping they are more successful than the two multi-million aircraft carriers, which largely escaped attention, and that there are no icebergs in the Clyde.
Kenny Burnett
Aberdeen
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