Trust me, you accept the beating. The alternatives and escalation path was not something you wanted to explore. My school had waterboarding on the menu, for ins

Trust me, you accept the beating. The alternatives and escalation path was not something you wanted to explore. My school had waterboarding on the menu, for instance, which I cannot recommend. And no, you can’t retaliate in secret by putting thumbtacks in the master’s shoes - that just results in cohort punishment and witch-hunts by your fellow pupils who want to skewer whoever is responsible for bringing down the wrath of god upon them. Fear is an exquisite control mechanism.