help or punish

Corporal punishment was already banned in England in the late 90s. It was such a relief to me, but at the same time weird, as I had studied in Singapore for two years because of my dad's relocation before starting secondary school in England.

It was like going from one end of a spectrum to the other end. All of a sudden I had so much freedom, especially because my school tried to encourage us to think critically, creatively and be independent, we were allowed to "experiment".

Students were rarely punished for small things, but when there was a problem, teachers would first schedule a "consultation" to talk to us individually. Then we'd decide together what to do next. The first time I had a "consultation" I was quite nervous, not knowing what would happen next.

It was after I copied my classmate's literature homework. I thought the teacher was going to tell me off or give me detention, but she didn't. But she wasn't that friendly either. She told me it was wrong not to do the homework myself, and she was not pleased. The message was very clear. I thought she would keep lecturing me and eventually punish me.

But she stopped and asked "What happened?"

I told her the story behind and she tried to find out the cause of the problem.

Then she said "you need a lot of help".

It was like a doctor's diagnosis. From then on I had a personal tutor, a prefect who got A in GCSE lit' to study with me for 45 mins after school on the day I had lit' class. This continued for three weeks.

Since then I could follow the teacher better and did the homework by myself.

But of course we did not always get away with the punishment. In fact we were sometimes made to write the lines as punishment. Unlike Simpsons, ours were much more complicated. Once, I got punished for not bringing my textbook to class for three times.

It was a tough punishment.

First, each line had four parts and needed to be written with four different colors.

For example,
I will not leave my textbook in my room again.

This part should be in red because it is about something wrong.

Then the second part in green is what I should have done:
I will always remember to bring my textbook to class.

And the third part in purple is a reason:
It is because I can learn better with texts and pictures in the textbook.

The last part in black is a solution:
To make sure my textbook is with me, I will check my class schedule and things in my bag again before leaving my house.

And these sentences were supposed to be copied 20 to 100 times on a special type of paper like this, with the small letters fitting to the dotted line and the big letters within the solid lines. The teacher circled words that were not tidy and put a cross at the end of the line, and we would have to write all four sentences on those lines again, until the teacher said okay.

Luckily my husband rarely make me write the lines, and when he did I only had to write one sentence on a single line paper for about 20-50 times.

My husband hasn't heard of this punishment yet. Please don't tell him :)