Discipline

I've talked about discipline differences before, but this week was the first time I saw something truly shocking (to me) in the classroom. We were in class and one of the kids was goofing off more than normal. The kids were paying attention to the pranks rather than correcting the exercises they had completed for homework. The teacher flung everything off of the kid's desk, forcefully lifted the student's face up to look at the student in the eye, and told the student 1) to pick everything up 2) to stop the tactics, etc and be quiet. I thought forcefully lifting up the head, and hence shoving the neck backwards was bad. As time went on the kid didn't stop. The teacher shoved everything off the desk. The kid kept sweeping his arm across the desk and the kids were still telling the student to stop rather than paying attention to the lesson. Finally the teacher walked over to the desk, and put all their weight on the kid's arm so the kid would stop moving it and continued reviewing the exercises. The kid started crying, and the other students were paying attention to the crying. So after about 5min of crying the teacher stood the student up, put the student standing at the front of the classroom and said (all in Spanish), "okay, you win. you wanted attention here you have it, the class is yours. Class we have clown, go ahead, continue." Luckily after about 3 min. the bell rang, and I asked the teacher about it later. The teacher said that the kid is always really annoying and never pays attention because the kid doesn't have to learn English because the student is mentally retarded. I about flipped out! That sort of discipline would not happen/be allowed in the States, and certainly not allowed for a child who has mental issues. I was shocked. After talking with some others about the incident it's apparently normal...