Great article!

I'm currently in my 22nd year of teaching in US. It was fun when I started, but it's changed. I started teaching in a bilingual classroom, and then moved to ESL. Around 2011, legislation in our state targeted the teachers for making too much money and blamed the unions for causing all sorts of problems. This campaign worked and the vitriol against my profession is still rampant to this day. We hear it now through the students whose parents believe that teachers are overpaid, lazy, and don't know anything. We see it every day in our dwindling bank accounts (this is our 16th consecutive year of net budget decreases to public education in our state). For a few years, I moved to a local charter school to teach Spanish. Wow- nothing but bullying from the students. Combined with divorce and the anxiety of separating assets because of that, and there was zero support from administration, zero support from parents, and zero sympathy from the students. I once had a student climbing the walls, screaming, and being terribly disruptive. When I sent her to the office, she was shocked, texted her mom (that's all allowed at that school), and mom sent the principal an email demanding she be placed in a different classroom because "we couldn't get along".

This is how things are getting here, and we will suffer as a country for it.

Punishment is another subject, and I get that it's really touchy. We can't do the things here that they do in Thailand, of course. Would it help? Maybe. I am a proponent of spanking a child when one needs to send a strong message, but the fear of overuse is real. And abuse is real of course.