Learning from my father’s rules By Timothy Johnson - Preacher’s Point When I was growing up, there was a standing rule in our house — if the teacher punished us at school, dad punished us at home. This rule was no questions asked. I never heard dad say, “I’ll go talk to your teacher about this.” The teacher was the authority in the classroom, and if discipline came, we must have deserved it. Our home punishment was fitting to the school punishment. Schools still engaged in spanking a child back then. I never received a spanking from my teacher, but I knew that dad would also spank me at home if I had. Detention was the usual discipline received (Do they have detention anymore?). Detention was spending an hour after school doing some menial task like writing the sentence, “I will not be late to class,” 100 times. Likewise, at home, dad would find something for me to do that seemed like a tremendous waste of time.