# British schoolmasters: still as terrifying as this Monty Python scene?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-schoolmasters-still-as-terrifying-as-this-monty-python-scene/707426>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 16, 2014, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-schoolmasters-still-as-terrifying-as-this-monty-python-scene/707426 "2014-12-16T19:26:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\
**Post date:** [December 20, 2014, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-schoolmasters-still-as-terrifying-as-this-monty-python-scene/707426/21 "2014-12-20T17:53:08Z")

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> [@HeyHomie](#):
>
> I mean, “bullied and tortured” by their teachers, not their peers. The OP’s statement that it brings back a shared experience seems to suggest that a teacher torturing and bullying a student for a minor infraction was par for the course. And parents put up with it?

Absolutely. Supported it, even (not UK here, but rural France. I think it was universal). Many would have added some of their own if you had complained.

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**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\
**Post date:** [December 20, 2014, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-schoolmasters-still-as-terrifying-as-this-monty-python-scene/707426/22 "2014-12-20T18:04:50Z")

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Too late to add : past primary school, which puts us in the late 70s, only one teacher I had hit the pupils. But he was doing it quite a lot. Giving back the graded schoolwork was a long drawn out process, involving quite a lot of tears, especially towards the end since he handed back the best grades first, and the worst ones last, hitting in various way for every mistake.

Once I moved to Paris from backward countryside around 1980, the culture was completely different. I don’t think I ever seen or even heard of a kid being as little as slapped by a teacher after that.

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**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\
**Post date:** [December 20, 2014, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-schoolmasters-still-as-terrifying-as-this-monty-python-scene/707426/23 "2014-12-20T18:11:46Z")

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And finally : as a kid, I thought that corporal punishment was wrong, and sometimes thought that I wouldn’t hit my kids once an adult. But then reality would come back, and I realized it wasn’t possible. That would come a day when most parents wouldn’t hit their kids at all was a pipe dream. That it could be someday forbidden by law unthinkable.

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