Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Can we bully you?

The article "Please, sir, can we bully you?"(April 19) is a chilling account of the scene in British schools. There were many media reports in the 1950s and 1960s on how schoolteachers in England could exercise no control over the unruly students, mostly from the working class. Many students dropped out, getting exposed to street culture. The bullies among them came to be known as Teddy Boys. There were reports of how even an inoffensive use of the word `sonny' by teachers led to their being beaten up.

The article reminds me of Evan Hunter's The Blackboard Jungle about schoolboys in the working class neighbourhood of New York. Not many teachers remained for long in such schools because of the terror to which they were exposed. Hunter also describes how the boys' behaviour in the classroom and outside was in baffling contrast. While they were perfectly capable of decent behaviour outside, they reverted to rowdyism in classrooms. Neither they nor their teachers seemed to understand why.

C.V. Gopalakrishnan,
Thiruvananthapuram

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