Vignettes #56

Whenever I hear speak of 'authoritarian personality' I instantly think of certain teachers I had at school. I guess we've all experienced this kind of teacher sometimes in our lives. In the 5th grade I started at a new school, a German 'Gymnasium', which is a higher-level school where you can go to from elementary school, if you achieve certain grades. The new teacher responsible for our specific class, all male pupils, was a fairly young man who only educated on one subject, arts. On first appearance he seemed to be a liberal and pleasant-natured person, but we soon learnt that he had a mean streak in him, too. On one occasion he had to leave the classroom for a minute or two to talk to someone. However, he left the door to the classroom open, and from where he was standing outside he had a complete view of everything going on inside. Of course, since we were young boys, we all did some chatting and some were a bit more rambunctious. When the teacher came back, he was obviously not amused. Instead of scolding the whole class, he mentioned one of our names and told the boy to stand up. "I'm punishing you, because you were not still, while I was absent," he said. Naturally the boy protested and said that we all had not been still, others had been even worse. "That is true," the teacher replied. "But I'm punishing only you, because you are the one I'm picking out."
A similar incident: this teacher tells an -admittedly - funny joke, and we all have a good laugh. The teacher, however, punished one of us, because he had laughed a bit louder than the rest of us.