1 Head Death: IF NOBODY TELLS ME WHO CALLED OUT, I'LL HAVE TO DEMOTE ALL OF YOU.
2 Death of Being Wrestled To Death By Steve: {pointing} IT WAS CHOKING ON A GIANT FROG!
3 Death of Choking On A Giant Frog: WHY YOU....!
4 Voice: SOMEONE CALL DEATH OF BEING A DIRTY ROTTEN SNITCH!

Ah, the old standby tactic used by teachers when they know someone did something bad, but not who it was. Force the rest of the students present to ostracise the wrongdoer by threatening to punish the lot of them.

This happened to me once at school. I was in a class and someone did something - I forget what - and the teacher couldn't discover who it was, so he made everyone in the class write out a bunch of lines as punishment. I couldn't even snitch because I didn't know who had done it either.

I considered this grossly unfair and did not write the lines as directed. Instead I wrote an essay on why it was unjust to issue punishment to those of us who were completely innocent in the affair. The teacher never mentioned it after I handed it in. Either he was too terrified of my incisive literary attack, or he never even bothered to look at what I'd written. I prefer to think it was the former.

---

2018-06-25 Rerun commentary: In hindsight, what I wrote was probably more work than just writing out the requisite lines. But I made a point, dammit, and that made it worth the effort.

I wonder if standard teacher strategy in cases like this has evolved over the years since I was in school. Can any school teachers out there reveal what current thinking is on how to handle situations where one student has done something deserving of discipline, but the whole class refuses to snitch and say who the individual culprit was?