When people make the news for assaulting teachers, I wonder whether the appalled “what are we coming to?” reaction is provoked by the violence, rather than the fact that this violence is directed against that figure of childhood authority, the teacher. There is never any excuse for violence of this nature, and I would be the first to condemn it. But then I am not in a position to understand how a parent feels when she is unable to put her anger into words and whips the teacher with her belt instead. On the rare occasions when a person or two who taught my sons got on my nerves, I was able to express my annoyance to these persons verbally, in writing, or directly to the headmaster, and I would not let go until the difficulty had been sorted out. I had no problems translating my feelings into arguments which were then expressed in words, nor was there anything to hold me back from saying exactly what I thought.

My sons had, on the whole, wonderful teachers – but that was because they went to a school which set great store by teacher-child relationships, removing from their posts any teachers who were found to be antagonistic, sadistic, nasty, sarcastic, mean, or just plain indifferent. Had any of my sons been subjected to the unpleasant treatment that only a certain kind of teacher knows how to mete out, I would have gone straight to the school and raised hell, having first made sure that no tall tales were being told. The difference, of course, is that I can raise hell with words, and so don't need to head-butt anybody or grab them by the hair.

But what of those who cannot put into words what they feel? What if they are unable even to rationalise their feelings in a way that they can understand?

All they feel is that blurring surge of rage, when your ears ring, the blood rushes to your head, and you literally see red. Unable to speak their anger, they lash out.

Again, I am not justifying assaults on teachers – not at all. In a civilised country, we have to behave like civilised people, and stick to the rule of law, which means not attacking anyone however much we might feel like it. To physically attack someone in a situation like this is inexcusable and should expose the attacker to prosecution, as it has in fact done in the most recent cases of parent-teacher violence. I am simply trying to understand why it happens. Those of us whose children went to private schools, where the teachers are handpicked, friendly and enthusiastic, should rewind our memories back to our own schooldays and remember that unless teachers are selected according to the mores of an enlightened school, they are going to be a mixed bag, with some unpleasant specimens among their number.

I disliked more than a few of my teachers with a passionate intensity, no doubt with good reason, and I never had the slightest doubt that they reciprocated my sentiments. They let me know it at every opportunity. Those were the days when sheer, unutterable nastiness did not disqualify embittered, ignorant, or just plain spiteful women from teaching children. Beginning with nursery school, when I was regularly dispatched to the ignominy of the corner in my younger sister's class, rather than that of my own class, through to fifth form, when one of the teachers would not begin giving the lesson until I had left the room for its duration – apparently I was a subversive influence, even without opening my mouth – I had my share of unfair and awful teachers. And that is precisely what alerted me to the fact that teachers are not always right, and that, from their position of authority they can, if so inclined as a result of their own psychological problems, inflict pain and misery on children. Not that they caused me any such pain or misery apart from that of boredom; I was largely indifferent to their efforts. I felt sorry for the weaker kids though, the ones who would stammer and sweat and buckle under as they were subjected to that form of punishment preferred by the subtly sadistic: public humiliation. They never tried this on me no matter how much I annoyed them because, I now realise from the perspective of adulthood, they realised that I might actually answer, exposing them to some public humiliation of their own. Instead, they banished me from their presence, where I could be neither seen nor heard.

Did my mother tackle these teachers and the headmistress? Of course she did. There were regular battles. Unlike the parents who get picked up by the police, she didn't head butt them or whip off her belt and give them a good lashing with it during assembly, though heaven knows she must have felt like doing so on a couple of occasions (in her place I certainly would have felt that way). But this is because she has words, and was raised to use them rather than her fists. She, too, had her unfair share of cruel teachers at school, most notably one who delighted in singling out and taunting a girl whose father had abandoned the family, a great scandal at the time, and another whose idea of punishment was to burst the boils on a child's body by hitting them with a ruler.

Another person who was at a nuns' school when he was little, during the 1940s, tells how he was repeatedly locked in a cupboard and left to sob, for no reason which he could remember. Nobody sent the police in to arrest these teachers, and parents adopted a policy of non-interference in school matters. In those days, children were seen as little more than dogs to be trained and disciplined, using methods that are by today's standards cruel and highly unacceptable. One of my grandfathers developed such a permanent suspicion of school and teachers, as a result of his own boarding-school experience, that he was determined his own children would never go to school at all, nor come into contact with any kind of teacher. This was possibly the only time he was over-ruled by my grandmother.

The point I wish to make is that teachers are not automatically above suspicion, and when parents are without the means or the ability to express themselves otherwise, their protective instinct can cause them to explode into violence. If parents are encouraged to talk through their anger and complaints, by head-teachers and class teachers who probably ignore them because of their 'ignorance' and lack of eloquence, there might be fewer assaults by parents at the schools. Besides, when parents react this way there is probably some history at work. Parents who react with this kind of uncontrolled violence may themselves have been subjected to teacher sadism or spite during their schooldays, and the suspicion that their own child may be falling victim to the same kind of nasty behaviour acts like a psychological trigger to cause the explosion.

Yes, I agree with the Malta Union of Teachers that some teachers need protection against some parents. But then, some pupils need protection against some teachers, too. If their parents don't protect them, who will? State schools, unlike some private schools, do not have an open system in which the complaints of pupils against their teachers are taken seriously. In that antiquated system, pupils are not encouraged to go to the headmistress or headmaster with a complaint against a teacher. So instead, the child takes the complaint home, the parent tries to take it up with the teacher or the head, is ignored or dismissed, and terrible anger builds up. Then look what happens.