Can you remember when you were in school? Of course you do, it was the best days of your life right? Cast you mind back to that lesson you will never forget, in my school it was History.
I can tell you now that History is the lesson that gets your blood pumping, your fingers tingling and your foot thumping. When you step through the History classroom door you see the teacher standing by his desk. He grins at you with his bright sparkling white teeth and waves you in. His short stocky figure instantly comforts you as you know he is a friendly chap.
His knowledge and enthusiasm about History is like being in a time machine. Within a few of his words you are there fighting against Nazi Germany. Debates flying back and forth like bullets and bombs of knowledge exploding. Nothing pleases more that the constant colouring in, the bright colours reflect my mood. As I know the next fifty-five minuets are going to judgement free.
If only this was true, life would be heaven.
It isn’t true because your blood doesn’t pump it runs cold. Your fingers stop tingling and become still while your foot becomes static. When you step through that door your life drains away from you. You see him, the grin you long to see is not a grin, but a snarl. That short stocky figure has grown into a fire breathing demon, waiting for you to speak out of turn.
I was right about one thing: you do feel like you are in Nazi Germany. This Hitler impersonator imprisons you as if you were a Jew in a concentration camp. The idealistic view of a communist world is pulled away from you and dictatorship takes control. His words do not bring you back to the trenches, but make you feel like you are in no man’s land, cold and alone.
There are no colours in this classroom, but pages and pages of black ink scribbled into textbooks. The walls are dull and lifeless. The only sign of life and hope is the work from other students who have somehow made it through this torture pinned up around this cell.
This is a living hell, you die a little over and over again. Slowly you fall into a comer, not sleeping but not awake. Only to be brought back round by the fire and the screams of the demon.
It is sad to say that this kind of teaching is current into today’s schools, and hopefully there is someone out there who can make a difference one day. But realistically, lets take a look back in time. For years teachers have punished children; inflicting pain, embarrassment, custom term papers and physical punishment on them to stamp their authority.
But schools must have changed from the days of old, surely?
They think that they had it hard with the slipper and the cane, but they have not experienced this new kind of corporal punishment. This kind breaks you down, it makes your brain decay slowly but surely, this is mental torture.
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React!