The contemporary witness

What actually is a contemporary witness?  It’s a person who experienced something long ago that no longer exists today and can tell us or write about it.
Contemporary witnesses are particularly important for understanding history. IGS students interviewed a teacher, a contemporary witness, who was in the same year group 60 years ago as they are now.
How many children were you in a class?
We were only 9 students, 7 boys and 2 girls, but the children in classes 1-4 had only one teacher and learned in one classroom, even though there were approximately 50 students in the whole class.
How did you get to school?
We had to run to school. Our house was not that far from school, about 5 minutes, but children from other villages sometimes had to walk an hour to get to school. There were no cars or buses to take us there.
What were the penalties if you misbehaved?
In addition to small punishments such as “writing” or detention, we often also received blows from the teacher, either by hand, but mostly with a stick, on the butt (buttocks) or on the hand.
What did the parents say to that?
We didn’t tell our parents, of course, because then the parents would have hit us again. They said that the teacher is always right!
Fortunately, everything is different and better today!