Using Your Head

I once picked up a four year old Daniel from primary school in Rhodes, Greece to find he had a huge red mark on his face where the teacher had smacked him.  This smack had been administered during the break a good hour before.  I was angry and tried with my limited Greek to complain.  The teacher sailed past me into the staffroom, ignoring my requests for information about what happened.  The rest of the parents gathered round and told me what had happened, gleaned from their kids. 

Apparently, the class had been let out to play in the school yard unsupervised and became too noisy.   This teacher had left her own class and gone out and smacked the first child she encountered, this happened to be my son.  The parents told me this teacher was notorious for smacking children and complaining would just make things worse for Daniel.  I tried to sleep on it and cool down but tossed restless with the injustice of it.  If only I could speak this wretched language at least I could defend my son in some way.  But my Greek was limited, very limited. 

The next day I went to the staffroom and asked to speak to the teacher responsible.  She came out into the corridor as regal and proud as ever and in Greek asked me what I wanted and told me to be quick.  I tried to tell her but the words would not come smoothly and she grew impatient and went to sail past me as before.  Infuriated I stepped in front of her and prepared to give her a head butt if she so much as tried to push past me again.  Eyeball to eyeball we glared at each other and she suddenly started saying how sorry she was and how it would never happen again.  She came over the next day at school assembly and apologised to Daniel in person in front of the other parents.  Who were all bewildered at the change and wondered who I knew in the educational system to make such a turnabout.  But I had discovered the universal language of head butting cuts across all cultural boundaries.

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