Lack of discipline and excessive behavioral problems exhibited by students in the classroom are frequently discussed topics these days. There are many theories on what is causing the issue—soft parenting and lax rules enforcement in schools, social disruptions created by the pandemic, an absence of corporal punishment, the absence of God, broken homes—and just as many theories on how to fix the problem. Back in the Dark Ages when I was still in high school, I once watched a gym teacher bounce a basketball off the head of a kid who wasn’t paying attention after he had repeatedly told the kid to quit talking.

Harsh? Maybe. But it went off the back of his head, not his face, and it definitely got the kid’s attention. The kid quit talking and listened to Mr. Radovich, the rest of us got a good laugh, and the class moved on. No harm, no foul. Would such a response by the teacher be accepted today? Probably not.

Teachers today grapple with how to maintain a disciplined environment, most of them hamstrung by overly lenient policies enforced by school boards out of fear of lawsuits and bad press. Might be why a large number of teachers have left the job to find other careers in recent years.