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Roman creativity when it came to punishing those who murdered their fathers astounds me.

If found guilty of parricide (killing your father) in ancient Rome, you’d be sewn into a leather sack with a viper, a dog, a monkey, and a rooster then flung into a body of water to drown.  This form of punishment was known as poena cullei (from the Latin ‘punishment of the sack’). Poena cullei was…

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The fallacy of private criticism and the mistake teachers often make when assigning consequences

There is a phrase that has become popular in teaching: Praise in public. Punish (or criticize) in private. I think this depends upon a lot of factors, and especially the climate and culture of the classroom. If a teacher is adept at bringing the class together as one big family, or a particular class has…

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