Chi non usa la verga odia suo figlio - and his pupils, perhaps.

Corporal punishment was a common learning experience in early XX Century Italy; but there is no special evidence that Mussolini was over-reliant on such methods in handling children, nor any evidence that his pupils especially disliked him.

Indeed - unconfirmed anecdotes and personal recollections aside - there isn't much evidence on Mussolini's career as a teacher at all, nor any particular significance to it.

Mussolini had attended - with remarkable profit, but questionable attitude - a somewhat distinguished education program in Forlimpopoli, taking his classes (1895-01) in a respectable institute under the direction of Giosuè Carducci much less famous brother Vilfredo. With that, he had earned himself "a scrap of paper worth make a living out of it" - as he later unceremoniously summed up the experience.

It was therefore at age 18 that Mussolini begun his brief teaching career - like many others, by looking for a job as an "elementary teacher"; a position which, according to the current laws, consisted in providing basic education to childeren aged 6-9 and which required either a, more difficult to earn, state appointment, or a (temporary) designation from a local administration.

Mussolini sent various applications and traveled to take the test/examinations in the neighboring region - as we know from a series of letters he exchanged with a fellow schoolmate of his, Sante Bedeschi, who was also looking for the same career - and was repeatedly rejected, most likely due to the large numbers of applicants. To the point that he considered seeking alternative occupation near his home, in the small town of Predappio, as a "replacement assistant" of the Town's Secretary.

It was in March 1902 that Mussolini earned his firts teaching post - in Pieve Saliceto, a small town with a socialist administration where Alessandro Mussolini's reputation might have helped somewhat - and begun his classes with "about forty kids, rather meek" (as Mussolini himself recounts). His salary, as a substitute, was of 56 Lire per month - a fairly modest one, especially given his complaints that he was paying 40 Lire for his lodging.

This - or the fact that he had "soon grown fond" of his two classes didn't prevent him from pursuing other interests. The relation with a married woman was a somewhat serious business at the time; the fact that the man was apparently also serving in the army at the time did little to impress his new fellow citizens, to the point where Mussolini, either wishing for fresh air or certain that his terms would not have been extended, begun making preparations to leave for Switzerland (he wrote again to Bedeschi, citing money and the certainty of a better employment once there - which, by his own later admission, he didn't have).

Before leaving, he addressed his full report to the mayor explaining, among other things his dislike for phisical cohercion:

Discipline [...] is something I have earned with the simplest methods: creating expectations, interest, being attentive. What one earns through cohercion is no real discipline. It smothers the child's individuality and creates a sense of misery. A teacher is supposed to remove and prevent the causes of bad [behavior] in order not to be forced to punish. [...]

This point of view should not be exactly surprising in context - even if we don't obviously have much in so far as context - as 20 years old Mussolini was obviously "progressively minded" in so far as education methods went, and likely felt necessary to defend his "novel" approaches to education from accusations of unruliness and fostering indiscipline.

Mussolini spent the period from July 1902 to November 1904 (except for a brief interlude to attend to his mother who was seriously ill in October-December 1903) in Switzerland, earning a living as a socialist agit-prop and sporadically attending lectures in Geneva. At his return, he had - first - to pay his debt to the Nation, by serving his terms in the Army.

Then, somewhat puzzingly for a man who had already a (modest) political reputation, but also tellingly of his general attitude and political commitment at the time, he accepted a new position as teacher, this time in Tolmezzo, a more distant post, nearby the city of Udine. There he held the position of teacher from November 1906 to August 1907 - a period of "moral and physical dissolution" (Mussolini had also recently lost his mother), frustrated by a large 2^nd class of about forty children ("some of them unrepentent and threacherous brats").

It was during this experience that - apparently - Mussolini learned that "teaching wasn't really the best for him", as, despite his efforts, he was forced to admit he had "failed to solve the disciplinary issue".

Furthermore, the salary (75 Lire per month, after Orlando's 1904 reform) was "an extremely meagre one". He also had become the subject of rumors due to his affair with a married woman and to his somewhat erratic behavior. Eventually his contract was not renewed and he moved on to seek a new post.

In November 1908 he earned himself a higher qualification, allowing him to teach French as well; so that he could apply for teaching older classes (age 10+).

It's with his move to Oneglia - a much better position (but Mussolini felt he had been "tricked", as the headmaster apparently wished for him to attend to disciplinary duties within the boarding school besides teaching) - that Mussolini appears to return to consider his "political" options, as the city had a socialist administration led by the brother of socialist leader Giacinto Menotti-Serrati, whom he had met in Switzerland. There he begun writing semi-regularly for a local socialist newspaper; something which might have played a role (this time at least) in the school's choice not to renew his contract.

After this experience, Mussolini ceased to seek emplojment as a teacher and pursued instead a career as socialist publicist and organizer.