I remember when I was young...

I am only 24 but this does not stop me from being horrified about what is going on in Finland's educational system.

Imagine this:
A 15 year old student refuses to take off his hood and starts mocking the teacher in the school canteen. After a couple of minutes of "arguing" the teacher swiftly removes the student from the canteen by pushing him.
Result: Teacher get fired.

Granted, the teacher should have maybe escorted the student by the arm out of the canteen, rather than push. But fired?? It's a great win for the bullies of schools. There was even a post on Facebook in the aftermaths of this showing the bully student celebrating his win and joking and laughing about the matter. Freely translated his post was something like this: "Yeyyyy there goes our teacher hahahhahah". Very mature don't you think, and also shows how badly hurt mentally and physically he seems to be about the whole scene.

It's not that many years ago that I went to school. Our teachers were not allowed to use violence against us, even if we were behaving badly, and they were also not allowed to publicly humiliate us in front of the whole class (although singing tests could be gruelling...). But if someone didn't obey the rules or was not quiet during classes when required, they were removed from the class room. And if you didn't go voluntarily, the teacher would escort you out by the arm. And the class would continue without interruption while the student outside the class room would have to sit there all alone and think about things... Very hard when you hear laughter coming from the class room. "Are they laughing at me?? What can be so funny about an English lesson?" And nobody was sued or got injured or needed psychiatric help.

It seems the parents are putting a lot of the up bringing responsibility on the school system, starting from the kindergarten. The difference is that teachers don't have the freedom to put boundaries on the children and youngsters. And kids are not dumb. They know how far they can go. And unfortunately now they know they can go so far that the teacher get fired.

What can be done to change this? Licenses to become a parent? Grab the arm - vouchers? Or just simply more clearly outlined rules to what teachers can and cannot do in different scenarios.

Also a question to think about: What would happen if teachers used smartphones to record their students during school hours?

Sincerely yours,
Nearly old enough to say "back in the old days..."