Of discipline and lack of it

Recently junior narrated an incident that happened in his class. A kid was playing pen fight during class hours and the teacher had confiscated them. While she was taking them to her table, the kid had been shouting "you have no right to take my pen"!! Junior and the whole class had apparantly found that rant funny and had been laughing. In fact, the kid might've shouted that in jest possibly too! But the fact of the matter is, was that right behaviour in any sense? it reminded me of an incident during my school days. My tamil teacher used to divide the class into the columns we are seated as A,B,C and D. She will ask spot quiz kind of questions from the subject and any one who answers correctly will earn ten points for their team. She will throw the chalk to the one who answered correct and that person has to write the point on the board. The chalk shouldn't break while catching or during writing. Once, one of the kid, broke the chalk while catching and instead of walking to her, he threw the chalk back to her for her to catch. It was definitely not ill meant and he hadn't thought much before throwing the chalk and might've even saw her as another person in a game of catching rather than his teacher. But the teacher burst out in anger at the disrespect shown in front of 40 odd students and roasted that guy. Unfortunately he also happened to be the top student in the class because of which she partially restrained herself but despite her dark skin tone, one can actually she her flustered. I was taken aback by the sheer audacity with which that guy handled the whole incident and how cooly he reacted to the whole situation hardly being bothered by her scolding or by the whole issue. I knew for a fact that guy never really bothered about language subjects and was more focused on maths and science. He won many awards across sports and inter school events and was a school favorite if not at class level. Despite that, his act was something that was always considered as disobedient and disrepectful towards the teacher. It was the only incident that i can recall across my entire school years. Junior has one such incident every single day of his school life!!! In fact, many such incidents makes blood boil even to hear them leave alone encountering them as a person at the receiving end. I wonder when and why they stopped giving punishments!! Just because couple of teachers went over board in meting out, doesn't mean we should stop it all together. At least make the unruly kids kneel down in the corridor or make them run laps across the school or bare minimal couple of scores of thoppukaranam at least!! When i was voicing it loud, wifey was telling in low voice how some kids were threatening with suicide even for small admonishments at primary school level itself!!! Onnum solrathuku illai!!! Probably it is not just schools but even at homes we've started treating kids with extreme care as if walking on egg shells around them, which has resulted in a generation of thin skinned people i guess!!