Grammar Point

The other day, as I went to the airport with our driver Monteiro, we were trying to converse in Portuguese and English, as usual. I had a few questions of Portuguese words I keep seeing and asked Monteiro, and then we were using the dictionary in the car to look stuff up. As we talked, he told me that Portuguese grammar is very difficult, and if he couldn't give the right answer in school when he was a kid the teacher would make him hold out his hand and then she'd smack it with a ruler until he got the answer right. He said he got his hand smacked so many times, now his Portuguese grammar is pretty good. I laughed, but was thinking, "Wow, that's terrible." Maybe Monteiro could see it in my eyes, because then he told me, "But if teacher does now. No. Call police. Teacher hold out hand," and motioned that, instead, the teacher would get punished.