Mr Morrow was terrifying. Physically squat, clad in a black academic gown which made him look like an angry bat, his temper was as short as his stature.

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Before every maths class, he'd line us up and demand absolute silence before we entered the room in two lines. Anyone foolish enough to snicker or whisper would earn a sharp rap on the knuckles with the ruler. Order established, we'd be marched into the room and the lesson would begin.

Our attention was assured because Mr Morrow had the uncanny ability to detect the slightest softening of focus on him and what he was teaching. Daydreams were shattered with a lightning-fast lesson in velocity theory when the blackboard duster was launched at the transgressor. Serial offenders quickly found themselves on lunchtime detention.

Harsh by today's standards perhaps but classroom disruption was out of the question. And after a term or two under his strict supervision, the seemingly impossible happened.

We found ourselves not only enjoying the subject but growing fond of the tyrant teaching it.

Even hopeless innumerates like myself occasionally managed to grasp the concepts he was explaining. Decades later, I still remember those light-bulb moments when something fell into place.

Mr Morrow popped back into memory when I read that Australia had become one of the worst countries in the world for classroom disruption. It wasn't teachers complaining about it; it was students, according to a survey conducted by the Programme for International Student Assessment.

The OECD average for students reporting classroom noise and disruption is 31 per cent. In Australia, it's 41 per cent. One of the indicators of disruption was particularly telling. Thirty per cent of Australian students complained that the teacher had to wait a long time for the classroom to become quiet enough for the lesson to begin. The OECD average for the same issue was 24 per cent.

None of this is to say we should return to the Morrow method of using terror to impose classroom discipline - that suited the times when I was at school and would probably be illegal now. But when students themselves complain their learning is being disrupted by their peers, action is clearly required.

This could be a return to traditional classroom layout where every desk faces the front and........

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