I was in primary school in 1977... anyone else ? The differences between then and now are as a result of political correctness. Let's not forget the reasons why those changes happened... they were to deal with extremes. I'll give you some examples.
Most teachers dished out corporal punishment to us and after 6 of the best you were sore but the matter was closed and moved on. There was good discipline and respect for the teacher. There were however 2 sadists [I'm sorry there's no other word to describe these people] who beat 7 year old kids so hard they would need a visit to hospital. One kid almost had to have his finger amputated. It was terrifying to watch and terrifying to be in those classes. How do you differentiate between reasonable corporal punishment and abuse ? You can't, so the whole thing's been banned and we're left with what we have today.
One of the teachers was a paedophile who did quite a bit of damage under the veil of corporal punishment before he was stopped. That was reported and he quietly 'left' probably to go to another school. That was wrong. He was a criminal who commited acts of depravity which were criminal back then. He should have done time and not be allowed to continue his child abuse. It wouldn't have happened today.
There's no silver bullet to this one. Some things were better in the 1970s and some things are better today. One thing most people would agree is that there is a solution better than both era but it just doesn't seem possible to implement.
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