Have you ever thought about or identified what could have changed your ways, whatever those were that I presume were inconsiderate of others or even violations of people? Or was it more that you were pushing back against the industrialized human cog factory we call education in the west?

My violations were usually of the variety of having failed to polish my shoes, or being late for a lesson, or being on a roof, or getting in fights - I was never the instigator but was always seen as the troublemaker.

So, what would have changed my mind? Fuck, some human kindness or compassion? Growing up in an inescapable institution, run by retired submariners and optimised for control, did not make for healthy balanced people.

I was a class clown type, but not a bully.

> Have you ever thought about or identified what could have changed your ways

An ADHD diagnosis and treatment.

Yeah, I got mine 30 years too late, too.

We called it a report card. That was a load of nonsense too. I quickly learnt how to forge signatures for it, and even getting the real signatures was a hassle... For the teachers who resented doing it themselves. Absolutely no benefit to it.

We also got punished collectively for things we didn't do. Happened to me on many occasions and I'm still bitter about it. It never flushed out the perps as it was supposed to. I despise the notion of mass punishment for someone else's misdemeanours.

Sounds like you went to the posh place. LOL. Either on a scholarship or family money.

Collective punishment is a war crime, I don't know why people think it would be effective on children? All it does is breed resistance and resentment, as you say.

It was de rigueur for us, but then again our housemaster was an Afrikaner. And no, it didn’t work, we’d just plot collective revenge on him, and collectively figure out how to escape the punishment.

> but then again our housemaster was an Afrikaner

What are you saying?

That the apartheid regime and its proponents were not terribly nice people.

Sorry if that’s a controversial stance these days.

Stereotyping all Afrikaners with that brush is despicable.

I’m sorry, calling Dutch colonists colonisers is despicable? Well, I suppose not just Dutch colonists, they did have their population bolstered by a lot of Austrians and Germans escaping war crime prosecution in the 40’s.

Anyway. In the early 90’s, in the U.K.? They were coming over for one reason only. The Afrikaner masters were always racist, always fans of collective punishment and bizarre corporal punishments.

I will just say you lack basic knowledge of history of Afrikaners and South Africa in general and that, coupled with your prejudice on display, is a pretty ugly sight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaners#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa#History

I'm sure that person must've been a pretty bad one. But to tie Dutch colonialism, apartheid and WW2 war criminals (centuries later by the way) together this way to excuse these discriminatory remarks is pretty daft. Needless to say, not everyone was/is like that.

Some Afrikaners resent British people and Anglophone South Africans, and this dates back to the Boer Wars and beyond. The British interned large numbers of Afrikaners and some of them died in their camps. They marginalised their language, and tried to replace it with English in administration (much the same as with the Québecois etc). The Afrikaners remembered all this, and the insecurity it gave them was partly what led to apartheid and attempts to reinstate Afrikaans as the main national language.

We tended to hear a lot about black-white relations in South Africa, and even fighting between different black African groups... But much less so about the split among whites. I'm told by white South African English speakers that certain Afrikaans speakers were very resentful of them. Some of them didn't like the rugby and cricket boycotts of the 1970s and 1980s either.

It is perfectly possible that some of what you experienced from that teacher came from all this.

I do not agree with this statement though "They were coming over for one reason only." Many South Africans came to the UK for economic reasons, or cultural ties much like Aussie and Kiwis. I had a white South African drama teacher at school and while I could criticise many of my other teachers, I always found him to be pretty easy going. Except in one area. Some of the children used to make fun of his accent and he didn't like that, which I can understand. He came over years before apartheid was dismantled by the way, but never gave any indication of supporting it.

It appears that you are saying that because someone is an Afrikaner, they must be a member of the apartheid regime or a proponent thereof.

If you are not saying this, then it's unclear how this is related to your previous comment.

You could write a comment that makes sense by saying "Afrikaners usually believed in weird corporal punishments because that was normal in their culture" or something and that would be perfectly acceptable.

Or perhaps, you have some specific knowledge that this guy was actually a proponent of apartheid, which you should share.