COMMENT | After six decades of nationhood, evolution dictates that the current generation of Malaysians should be stronger, tougher, smarter.

Or so one would think. Going by the brouhaha over Cikgu Azizan Manap’s slap of a student, however, we seem to have become only flabbier, with everyone working themselves into an emotional froth until the case went to court. But why did it get to that point?

In my primary school years, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, kids weren’t foolish enough to get punished at school and return home to solicit sympathy from their parents. Because they’d kena lagi (get punished again).

The offences: Talking or eating in class, not doing your homework (the excuse that your dog chewed up your homework merited punishment more severe for unoriginality), forgetting to bring your textbooks, not paying attention or nodding off, secretly reading comics, and just being a dungu (nitwit).

The punishments (humiliation): Crossing your hands to pull your ears while doing squats, standing in a corner in front of the class, standing on your chair, standing on your desk for a more severe offence, standing in the corridor outside the class when the teacher can’t bear to be in the same room as your ugly mug, or melting in the middle of the badminton court under the hot sun for the whole school to snigger at.

The punishments (pain): The badminton court sojourn, which ends by getting acquainted with the rotan.

Teachers used the rotan on palms and behinds, rulers across palms or knuckles (which is more painful), slaps, and knocks on the head – from which we discovered that adults say one thing and do another, by trying to knock sense into our heads but knocking us senseless instead. Lesson learned: acquiring sense is painful.

My Standard Four Malay language teacher, though being adept at all of the above, still preferred the chalk duster hurl. Too bad his aim wasn’t very good, which often resulted in some collateral damage. But it didn’t matter to him, because offending students would still have to pick the duster up and bring it back to the front of the class for the honour of having their faces dusted.

But this teacher topped himself one day, when after asking me and two others to step aside, he hooked the offender by his neck using a hula-hoop and yanked him forward, sending tables and chairs flying – just so the student could be given a couple of knocks to the head...