What is the dumbest thing a teacher has said to you?

Odd that a lot of people asking about this have not considered the issue of what country OP comes from (Phillippines, I think). Attitudes toward corporal punishment of children vary greatly across the world. Most do not in general make the heavy public/private distinction that the USA does, so they have often gone rapidly from paddling all over the place in government schools to banning it even in private, with an increasing number even forbidding parents not to spank their own children at home!

In contrast in the US, there is no movement to ban spanking at home, and only one state (New Jersey, which had banned it in government schools in the 19th century) banning it in private schools too and none moving to follow. Whereas over the past 30 years there has been a huge movement towards abolition at government schools, with statewide bans now in a majority of states and actual practice limited within remaining states mostly to obscure areas. (Thus at this point the trend feeds itself, with a lot of areas getting rid of it just to avoid seeming like yokels.)

As for private schools, even Catholic educators don't seem to know of any place that still uses it. Officially, at least...though the world is obviously very different now, a lot of Catholic school discipline used to be very much off the books even when no one thought of complaining about official paddling. My own Catholic school in the 90s, in a city where government-school paddling was outlawed in the 19th century, officially was completely nonphysical, but the assistant principal took the occasional private-school liberty of slapping a kid when he got really fresh!

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent