Thank you for sharing & confessing.  Two common traps await supporters of employing violence (calling a spade a spade here) to respond to violence: Feeling helpless and Seeking revenge. Both perpetuate violence and both are misuses of corporal punishment. Issues surrounding the regulation of violence in a multi-cultural nation (for e.g. Black teacher caning White scholar) are in my opinion like the death penalty best avoided. All violence should not be a 'resource' within the national dialogue. Centuries of violence in RSA, including the era of male pedagogic neo-Nazi thugs most of whom had passed through the defence force and who returned only to thrash scholars in classrooms under the guise of "Christian education" got us nowhere. Your suggestions for seeking alternatives to teachers modelling violence to impressionable scholars, including your insightful identification of the sheer lack of learning class management techniques are brilliant. Please keep going.