I attended secondary school in the 1980s. In my first week, standing against a wall on the peripheries of a school concert, a boy said something to me and I replied to him. A teacher ran at me and punched me in the stomach. #liveline
I remember sliding down the wall, the back of my head hitting off a radiator as I blacked out. That was my introduction to a place infected completely by a culture of bullying, a place where violence seemed to seep from the walls.
Corporal punishment was outlawed in Ireland in 1982, but nobody told some of our teachers. One ancient relic, an algebra teacher, offered an amnesty to boys who had failed to complete his daily tests. Three wallops of his cane to the hand if you owned up, six if you didn't.
(I should add we had decent teeachers, too, and my English teacher was one of the kindest, most brilliant men I ever met, and someone who remained my friend until his death a few years ago.)
Twenty or more years after leaving school, I had reason to re-visit the place. The new principal, a nice man, had been a young teacher when I was a kid. He gave me a tour and was at pains to tell me how times have changed and how the school is now child-centric.
After our meeting, I walked a few hundred yards and threw up.
