In 1957, when I was 9, I suffered, along with many others, at the hands of a sadistic teacher. This man, by name Ian Forbes, was the kind of man who should never have been allowed near children, let alone teach them.  All he really taught us was to fear authority and punishment.  However, he couldn't command respect and as a result got none.

He had a collection of about 10 bamboo canes and when he was feeling benevolent he would let us choose which stick we were to be thrashed with - always on the hands.  He would hold the boy's wrist, to keep the hand horizontal.  If you lowered your hand as the cane came down, in order to ride the blow, he would bring the cane up sharply under the hand, to raise it and to cane the knuckles.

He caned us almost all day, not for disobedience or insolence, but for maths' errors, spelling mistakes, and for literally blotting our copybooks.  He was never really satisfied until the pupil was howling in pain, or until the blood dripped from his hands.  On one occasion, he broke the skin on my right palm with a wooden stick.  I still bear the scar.

One morning, during breakfast at home, I broke down in tears and implored my mother not to send me to school anymore.  I poured out my terror and hatred for this man.  So my mother went to visit him -'to have words with him'.  That afternoon, he sat me down alone after school and quietly warned me that if my mother ever complained about him again, he would kill me - yes, 'kill' me.

Now my fear shifted - fear that if I showed my misery again at home, my mother would visit him again - and then he'd kill me.  So I put on a brave face and pretended that everything at school was fine.

Even more sickening than the canings, were his actions after a caning.  He would often sit next to a crying pupil, put his arm around him and say:

"Did I hurt you?  I'm sorry."

He went as far as phoning one Saturday morning and asking my mother if he could take me to the cinema that afternoon.  My mother was appalled and said "No!' of course".  So he was not just a sadist but also a closet paedophile.

A month before the school year ended, I burst into tears at home again and my mother just looked at me and said:
 "Mr.Forbes?"

I pleaded with her not to visit him again, convinced I would be dead by 6 o'clock.

I don't know what my mother said to him, but for the last weeks of school, he didn't touch me, he barely acknowledged my presence.

Years later, a story came through on the grapevine, that when Mr. Forbes was about to cane a boy on his infected hand, the lad snatched the cane out of Mr.Forbes's hand and slashed him over the face - before running off in sheer terror.  That might sound like poetic justice, but in those benighted days, instead of Mr.Forbes being investigated and imprisoned, the boy was probably beaten again and no doubt expelled from the school.

Incidentally, Mr.Forbes's hobby was to go into the outback on a weekend and shoot as many kangaroos as he could.  He would sometimes boast of his slaughter triumphantly to us.

To this day I can still see that bushy moustache, his grey smock, and those menacing, bloodshot eyes.

So searing was my experience all those years ago, that I could never humiliate and hurt the pupils I taught.  My subconscious attitude in teaching was always

Do everything Mr.Forbes didn't, and don't do what he did.

In the 1960s, the late, great Leila Berg, was guiding an American teacher around a school in London.

He asked her if corporal punishment was prevalent in UK prisons.  Her answer, calmly delivered, said it all:

"Oh no.  You should understand that in Britain you are only allowed to hit someone if they are much smaller than you".