Youth: How I learned respect

 My how things have changed.

"When I was a boy"  (as all us "mature" folks like to say) a teacher couldn't be sued for walloping a kid where he sits down. Whatever you needed to do, you just did. My teaching career would have been a lot more pleasant had this rule stayed in place. Public school administrators in the "downtown" offices don't want to admit it, but for the most part they've lost control. A whole generation of children sacrificed to pagan ideas about raising children.

So there I was in gym class, circa 1960, Columbus Public Schools. The gym teacher at old Linden McKinley High that year was Mr. Jackson. He doubled as the football coach. Could have been a marine drill sergeant too. Not to be messed with.

But little "Bobby" (that's what they called me in those days, and I was actually in junior high and only acting "little") didn't get it. It was an all male class, for which I am very grateful when this painful memory resurrects itself. Bobby had to keep playing around. Smarting off. Being a wise guy (how did that term ever appear?). Distracting the sarge, I mean the teacher, from his instructing.

Suddenly Jackson had had enough. My stomach sunk as I heard him utter those four fateful words to another student: "Go get my paddle!"  It seemed only seconds until my obliging classmate emerged from the locker level, Jackson's weapon in hand,  and back into the gym where we were all seated on the bleachers.

I was summoned from my back row seat to the head of the class. Not exactly as an honor student, not like the guy in Jesus' story who is humbly waiting in the lowest place and is then elevated by the master of the feast. There would be no elevation during that event except for my pulse rate and my shame level.

In front of probably 30 or more junior high boys, I was asked to touch my toes. The next thing I knew I was touching the floor. With my face. If I could have gone any lower I would gladly have done so. Such humiliation.

"There's your hero, fellas," the gym teacher calmly announced to my compatriots.

Yep, there he was. But you know what? I never messed around in gym class again. And I didn't die, except on the inside. But that kind of dying is OK. May God speak to believing parents in this undisciplined land of ours to start up the "prohibition" devices again. Paddles, rods, switches, whatever you want to call them: they work. And when they work, kids work. And when kids work, schools will work again.

Thanks for your visit! Go to https://www.icommittopray.com/ for regular updates on the persecuted church. Check out my books at Amazon.com. Send me a message at bobdiakonos7@gmail.com

Visit my podcast:  wordandcross.com