Swift kick the best medicine?

NO says former principal of about 35 years Bill Noble

‘‘I think, quite frankly, (Rowlingson) was lucky that he wasn’t dismissed because you’re not allowed to hit kids. Simple. And worse is kicking them,’’ he said.

The teacher needed to look at discipline in the classroom, his relationship with students and whether the programme of work was keeping kids engaged.

‘‘But in saying that, somewhere down the line there’s always a couple of kids that can be real bloody devils.

‘‘A lot of people would say they did need a kick in the backside but you’re not allowed to do it.

‘‘Kids challenge teachers. There’s no question about that. Even a fiveyear-old will challenge a teacher.’’

He recalled an occasion he heard of about 25 years ago, when a teacher hit a student who was ‘‘going at another kid with a chisel across the desk’’.

Technology rooms were dangerous places, Noble said.

Yet even in a general classroom, he’d heard of teachers having to restrain students behaving dangerously with scissors.

YES says former teacher and columnist Joe Bennett

‘‘This is storm in a teacup stuff. There isn’t even a teacup,’’ he said.

‘‘In terms of the cruelty and violence available, that was just a puff of air.

‘‘I’m not calling for wholesale thumping of children or whatever. Let’s put it in very simple playground terms: the boy started it. And the boy was told to stop it and the boy opted to continue.’’

The teacher’s reaction was not ideal but nor was the world we lived in, he said.

‘‘Let’s say a bit of metal had caught some kid in the eye. What happens to the teacher then?’’

As a teacher, Bennett once threw a chair at then-pupil Leigh Hart, now a comedian.

‘‘Half in a joke I said, ‘look, if you don’t shut up, Leigh, I’ll throw a chair at you’. And then he carried on. I said, ‘I warned you, Leigh’, and then I threw it,’’ he said.

‘‘And he wasn’t actually looking when I threw it. This thing was in mid-air, it was bearing down on him and I screamed at him, get out of the way. And he ducked and the thing made a hole in the wall.’’