Apologies for the terseness of my first answer, Bozcat - re-reading it, it sounds snappy, and it wasn't meant to be! As far as punishments go, at my school if we were playing up or weren't paying attention we were warned by the teacher; if we did it again after being warned we were hit with a cane or a plimsoll (a soft sports shoe) on our backsides. This was unpleasant, so after being warned once we tended to behave ourselves; thus the cane and the plimsoll weren't called into action very often - the very fact that they
might be used was enough to keep us in line. Since the teachers didn't have to spend much time making us behave ourselves they had more time to teach us things, and since we weren't able to do what we would have liked to do - talking, playing shove ha'penny football, and the like (there was no texting in those days, and no mobile phones) - we listened to what they had to say, and we generally left school wiser and fit for taking on a job. Which I hope you will do, eventually. Good luck!
