Willravel

Yikes. You, as a former teacher, think it's okay for a teacher to pull a chair from under a student in an act of anger and agression? As a teacher myself, I KNOW that with teaching kids must come saint-like patience. I never, in 5 years of teaching music and sports, yelled or was aggressive with students. I did my fair share of punishing bad behavior (anything from calling parents in front of the child to the child being left out of the fun activities), but never once did I punish out of anger. The thought of verbally or physically atacking a student is unthinkable, as it should be for any figure of authority. Kids misbehave. Kids test limits and try to provoke teachers. That's normal. If you lower yourself to their level, all you end up teaching them is that acting like a child is okay.

Your sons said that the kids behavior was wrong and that you and your wife would ahve punished them, that's great. Parents are free to teach their children as they please, so long as they do not brake any laws. There are plenty of parents out there that think it's fine to yell at kids and belittle them and even physically attack them. That doesn't make it right. Yelling is an aggresive act of intimidation (now speaking as a psychologist, not a parent or teacher), that is not a healthy way to "vent" anger. In actuality, yelling at children does damage not only to the children by teaching them that intimidating people will help them get their way, but it also teaches you the parent that it's alright to lose your temper and makes it easier for you to lose your temper in the future. The kids were acting up and needed borders and limitations of some kind in order to learn how to act. They neede to be punished. They did not need to be physically threatened and yelled at. All that did was help the teacher get his rage out, and that didn't help anyone. It was irresponsible for the school not to publicly repremand the teacher.