Sitting in the corner is nothing compared with having your mouth taped shut, as happened to one American student.
Corporal punishment is out - but its replacements are getting stranger by the minute.
In New Brunswick last year, a teacher sent a boy home with a note saying that he had to wear a dress the next day or be suspended.
After his dad stormed into the principal's office and raised an abusive stink about it, the RCMP was called and he was arrested. His case was resolved last week, with the dad sentenced to probation for a year and forced to make a $200 donation to a school fund.
His defence lawyer told the court that the dress-wearing demand is used by the school to punish kids who are acting up, but that the dad, Ralph Curtis McFarlane, didn't know that at the time.
We're not sure that makes it any better. Boys wearing dresses as punishment?
This reminds us of other recent cases of questionable teacher behaviour. There was the Brooklyn special-education student who was suspended after his mom complained about his mouth being duct-taped shut by his teacher. The mother announced this summer that she is suing city's Department of Education and the teacher for $3-million (U.S.)
Then there was the Edmonton tale of a teacher this summer who snipped a Grade 10 student's picture out of 150 yearbooks as punishment for negative comments he made in his profile about the school principal: The student falsely accused the administrator of spending money on a fence instead of textbooks. The school reprinted the yearbooks.
Parents, what would you have done in the dress situation? (Short of violence, of course.)