Italian teacher jailed after making pupil do lines

An Italian teacher has been ordered to serve a jail sentence for making one of her pupils write "I am an idiot" on a blackboard, The Telegraph reported.
The teacher, identified in court documents only as Giuseppa V., resorted to the old-fashioned punishment as a means of disciplining the 11-year-old student, whom she accused of bullying.
The case was initially heard by a court in Palermo, Sicily, where the teacher works in a middle school.
The court found the teacher guilty of humiliating the child and abusing his human rights and sentenced her to 15 days in prison.
She launched an appeal, at which the sentence was overturned.
But the case was then referred by prosecutors to the Supreme Court in Rome, which upheld the original decision on Monday.
The court's panel of judges ruled that it was wrong for teachers to dispense punishments which demonstrated their own "power and strength".
The teacher had "abused her means of correction and discipline" and offended the pupil's dignity, the court ruled, citing the United Nations charter on the rights of children.
Instead of upholding principles of "peace and tolerance", the schoolteacher had used "violent" means to punish the pupil, the judges said.
The practise of doing lines has been given a contemporary twist in the cartoon The Simpsons, in which most episodes start with Bart Simpson writing out lines on the school blackboard, including "The First Amendment does not cover burping" and "I was not the sixth Beatle".
In some of the more absurdist examples of the running gag, Bart writes "I am not a 32-year-old woman" and "Nobody reads these anymore".