discipline

And then came PeeWee. She comes up to my armpit and is almost as skinny as I am, but she's petite in the same way a woven steel cable is petite.

She is my Thai teacher—the nice Thai lady I am theoretically relieving from some of her teaching duties.

How to describe—she has dark hair, dark eyes, nut-brown skin, is somewhere between 30 and 65, and wears a gorgeous wardrobe of traditional Thai skirts and tops (why do they only make women's clothes that small?)--which describes 98% of the veteran teachers on campus.

Like almost all Thai teachers, she carries a rod: a polished branch a couple cm thick with red tape on the last handlengths of either end. It's telling that the tape is nicked and dinged threadbare. When she's in the front of the class, she clicks around on her sizable (for Thailand—maybe 3cm) pumps tapping her rod on things—the floor, the board, the wall, desks, and, yes students.

When she circulates through the desks, her hands flit around like nervous finches. But they light only on troublesome and noisy perches, and wherever they light, they tweak: twisting an ear, cuffing someone upside the head, disarming one student of a ruler to whap another student's hand—this is how discipline happens in the regular program. But getting through the class is still a matter of endurance shouting, and that's what surprises me.

I first encountered the corporal punishment while talking with the fourth-grader who christened me Teacher Ow. He was sitting outside his classroom and poked at my most recent injury.

“Ow, teacher, your arm is hurt.”

“Yes, and how are you today?”

“I am hurting, too, teacher. I did not do my homework so my hands were slapped. See, teacher?”

Big, red, well-defined ruler marks front and back on his left hand.

“Today she was not very nice.”

“Well, why didn't you do your homework?”

“Because I was playing with friends. Usually she does not hit me for missing this homework, but today she was in a not good mood.”

And that was in the prim and proper EP.

In my new building, teachers regularly line students up to whap the hell out of the backs of their legs: “Class, five minute break while you watch mea beat your peers.” It is simply part of things. Jack around too much and get a whack.

Believe it or not, it works.

In the morning, students file down the main promenade, stopping to wai a small group of bigshots. If the student is out of place—hair's a mess, uniform isn't on straight, that sort of thing—their legs get whapped. If they're way out of line, they are pulled aside to watch the rest of campus file past, occasionally getting whapped, before they get a right whallop. And it's like the occasional round of poo-peeing: it just comes with the territory.

Welcome to Thailand.