You know why?

Because damn rules.

In good old times if a student told teacher to fuck off a teacher would've given a student a cuff on the nape and the conflict would've been resolved.

These days? Nope. You're not allowed to touch children. You're not allowed to yell at children. You can call parents at school and have another "he didn't do nothing" conversation.

So what you do? You introduce zero tolerance rules. You call the police. You turn school into prison where the same set of extremely strict rules is applied to each and every student.

And all of that could have been prevented by just one gentle slap!

When I was in school 35-40 years ago (in the south) they would literally beat you in the butt with a board. One coach had a whole collection of different shaped paddles hanging on the wall which he would point out the first day of class.

It wasn't a joke either, I remember a guy showing me his butt with a big nasty purple bruise on it the shape of a board. I got paddled once but the teacher took it pretty easy and I just had a little red. He was a weird old guy and I think he mostly liked hitting bent over young boys with boards.

They could pretty much do it for any reason and some kids not popular with teachers were paddled pretty regularly. Shortly after my time this was discontinued and I was not at all sorry to see the practice go, but now we have gone too far the other way in my opinion. Calling the police on kids for minor infractions is way over the top. But some semblance of order has to be enforced or no one can learn.

I feel like you learned more about life back then (maybe in sort of a "Lord Of The Flies" way to be fair). Most everyone could do what they wanted after school without worrying about stranger danger and having adults hovering over them the whole time and there was a lot of freedom to explore. If you fucked up though, you got paddled and you might get beat up by a fellow kid without a lot of recourse to authorities. It was just a rougher time, but more free as well which probably sort of describes the history of humanity also come to think of it.

I don't know which is worse, then or now. It seems kids were more self confident and self reliant and less neurotic back then. But there were a lot more physical fights and odd kids had a really tough time and kids who came from rough situations often really got beat down by the system. Literally.

Nah, other countries have non-jail schools without beating kids just fine.

> without beating kids

There's a pretty wide spectrum between: "Can't discipline kids that act up" and "Beating kids"

Kids need boundaries. It's literally what they spend a good portion of their time testing for. If you aren't allowed to provide boundaries for them, then they will flounder, which turns into a self-reinforcing cycle.

The only tool I remember teachers or schools having the ability to wield against students when I was in school was suspension or expulsion. Are US schools not allowed to suspend kids?

> Are US schools not allowed to suspend kids?

I've heard from some teacher acquaintances that it's highly discouraged because the parents tend to complain a lot and the kids view it as a free vacation from school.

It sounds like "try to ignore them" is basically the only recourse teachers have in some districts against disruptive or worse students.

My dad was a public school teacher and his last year got a class of “sweat hogs.” Three students were extremely disruptive, regularly. He went to the principal and said he wanted all three out of his class or he’d quit. Next day two were suspended but the third wasn’t. He told the office he’s stay until noon to find a sub. Later that week, the third student was arrested for stealing an 18 wheeler and driving it across the state.

There's also detention and "in-school suspension" (which is basically a big detention).

I think these punishments are commonly decided by administrators, not teachers. The teacher just reports them up the chain for misbehavior.

Suspension and expulsion are becoming embroiled in the anti-racism crusade due to some high-profile incidents, so blunt laws are being written to outlaw them altogether.