Kristen Gyles | Some school punishments just don’t work

One Friday, during my high-school days, I sat in a class where the teacher issued a terse warning to a male student whose pants were apparently too tight. She made it clear that he needed to fix his pants because if he returned to school in the tights on Monday, he would not be allowed to stay in her class. She didn’t leave it there. She told him that she would send him out of the class and give him a ‘deportment mark’ and that she would also mark him as being truant.

He returned to school on Monday with his tights on, and refused to leave when she told him to get out. The boy has a brain. A teacher shouldn’t try to mark a student as being truant after ordering them out the class. He knows that. The class is now sitting and watching what she’ll do. Now, not only does she have an improperly attired student, but a blatantly defiant one.

So, Miss stands her ground. She’s not teaching until he leaves the class with his tight pants. He’s sitting there and she’s sitting there. And the rest of us, tired of the stalemate, begin to occupy ourselves with reading, sleeping and quiet chatter, waiting on either of them to break the chokehold.

At the end of the class, to our surprise, she expresses her disappointment that the class did not help her to chase the boy out of the class. Wow!

In cases like these, not only is the teacher sure not to get support from the school, but they will also end up having to back down from their lofty declarations, reducing their own sense of control in the classroom. Truth be told, many teachers have found themselves in this position. It’s easy for a teacher to end up hanging their cap where they just can’t reach it. But, the nature of punishment in schools today, is partly to blame.

ARSENAL

Teachers are trying to use the tools available to them, but what do the teachers have in their arsenal? Detentions, demerits, order marks, deportment marks and other totally ridiculous and laughable means of punishment that hardly any child in the world really cares about. While the discussion is not about whether or not he should have been punished for sporting tights to school as school pants, the promised punishment was not much of a deterrent to begin with, because of its impotence.

Punishment has its place in schools. But given that the classroom is a high-stress arena with emotions typically flying in all directions, there needs to be clear criteria outlining the parameters of school punishment. Some students are abusive towards teachers and in some cases, the teachers react or retaliate in unmeasured ways that can potentially hurt the students.

For this reason, corporal punishment has rightfully been booted out of schools. Some students have returned home with swollen faces and bruised backs because teachers either lost their cool in the heat of classroom stress or simply indulged warped ideas about what appropriate discipline looks like. But, teachers who simply don’t like children or suffer from lack of sound judgement find creative ways of harming students even when corporal punishment is disallowed.

In 2016, for example, I distinctly remember an incident in which a child was apparently made to stand outside and look up at the sun as ‘punishment’. That wasn’t punishment. That was abuse. Regardless of what the child was thought to have done, that type of treatment would have only caused harm.

But, these occasional cases of lunacy aside, the banning of corporal punishment in schools has helped to protect students from many abuses. So, with corporal punishment having rightfully lost its status as an appropriate means of discipline, what else can be done to maintain discipline in schools?

MEANINGFUL AND EFFECTIVE

Get the students more involved in the actual work that needs to be done around the school. Punishment can be meaningful and effective.

It is the dream of many students to get a week off from school to spend at home lounging in front of the TV. Yet, somehow, someone thought sending students home from school for ‘suspension’ would be a deterrent to bad behaviour. Maybe way, wayyyyy back in the day, but not today.

Why not instead have the students participate in the sweeping and mopping of classrooms for the suspension period? Working in the school kitchen? Clearing litter from the school yard after lunch times? Weeding the school’s agricultural farm? But, please. End the ‘go-home’ suspensions. Furthermore, some students really need this type of exposure to certain tasks.

If schools adopt disciplinary programmes that involve activities like these, they simply need to declare from the outset what the expectations of students will be, following cases of misconduct. Parents may decide that their children are too good to scrub pots and mop floors, and can consequently find different schools.

One more thing. Giving overwhelming attention to bad behaving students only encourages them. So, asking a student to put their chewing gum on their forehead or having them tape a ‘bad behaviour’ sign on to their uniform, is a class clown’s dream.

The point here is that student discipline is cultivated, and where there are no consequences for actions, discipline is likely to run low.

- Kristen Gyles is a free-thinking public affairs opinionator. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com.