Has anyone ever heard of a school having a child’s parent attend classes with them as a punishment? Do you think it might have a beneficial impact on the student’s behaviour?
Only if it’s the kids mother, and she’s dressed like Roseanne did, with the overalls and clown makeup. Any kid would behave perfectly to avoid that situation, IMO.
This wasn’t in school…but one time, my mom picked her nose in front of the guy I had a crush on in 5th grade. He was walking down the sidewalk, and we were in the car waiting for someone.
I think if more moms are willing to pick their noses in front of their kids’ friends, more kids would sit still and be good.
Happened to me in fifth grade for about a week. Not only did it not help me, it pissed me off, embarassed me, and made me resent everyone involved.
So, in my experience, no.
I thought you meant punishments involving novels :smack:
Are they punishing the student or the parent? Seriously.
Just don’t hit them with a hardbound copy of War and Peace. That would be punishment on an epic scale.
And what if the parent works?? Surely the school can’t give compensation for wages and such?
No, but during my senior year there were a few girls who had to bring their parents with them to the prom, or not go at all.
Actually, I just remembered my favorite punishment–some grade 7-8 boys were sentenced to three days in grade 3.
Youngest HallGirl was a horror in school. Talked all the time. About everything. To everyone. (Okay, that was as bad as it got–maybe not “horror” status.) However, her teacher…must have been about fourth grade or so…was having a difficult time with her, so I suggested that I come to class for the day, and sit behind her and “remind” her to focus her attention on her work, not running her mouth.
Ha.
Boy was I surprised. The class was so chaotic, I found it difficult to figure out who was talking to whom. How in the world the teacher could have pointed out HallGirl among all the other 20 kids who were running their mouths at the same time was beyond me. However, I sat there, behind HallGirl, and reminded her to do her work. Even though I wasn’t mean about it (I would put my hand on her shoulder), all the other kids thought I was “mean” (even though I had most of them for Campfire the previous year). I figured out that if talking was the worst of HallGirl’s problems, then we both had it easy.
She’s now in college, and STILL talks to everyone about everything. She’s a jouralism/foreign policy major. So, there!
If my mother came to school today, I have daddy’s gun safe key under my pillow tonight.
Yeah I think arcane ways of embarrassing people are the hallmark of good discipline.
The administration at my grammar school were all so afraid of my mother that they wouldn’t dare invite her to spend a week in the classroom with me. (I had a couple horrid teachers, and Mom wouldn’t stand for it–she once wrote a letter to my 4th grade teacher that said “I hope you take pity on the children of this town and retire.” To put it in perspective, my mother is a child psychologist, and spent many years working with developmentally disabled children–she knew what she was talking about.)
My fifth grade teacher, however, had an interesting punishment for talking in class. I used to spend the whole day chatting with the boy who sat next to me–so she chained our desks together. It was strangely mortifying, especially when all the other kids started with the jokes about marriage and the like. Looking back, it’s excessively tame, but it kinda worked.
For a week or so.
… or if you used a copy of the New Testament, it would be a punishment of biblical proportions.
That reminds me of when I was a kid, in about fourth grade–Sister Ludmillia kept threatening me when I would turn around and talk to Patrick M. He was cute as a button, smart as a whip and I simply loved talking to him. (He did his own fair share of talking as well.) One day, Sister Ludmillia said, “If you turn around one more time to talk, you’ll be sorry.” That lasted for about…two minutes, max. There I was, turned around, talking to Patrick. “Okay!” Sister Ludmillia screeched, “Then just sit on his desk!” Oh, boy. Wrong thing to say to me. Sitting on Patrick’s desk, I had his undivided attention, and although it only lasted about two seconds at the most, I was in heaven. No, not humiliated, as Sister Ludmillia may have predicted, but thrilled, simply thrilled. And, no, it didn’t keep me from talking in the future.
However, I still have wild thoughts of sitting in front of Patrick M. in my Catholic school girl uniform–only now my thoughts are something akin to a heavy metal rock video and Patrick M. is nekkid. 
It does seem weird thanking a Catholic nun as the inspiration for a wild sex fantasy.
I do believe Dave Barry said the bast discipline was having their parents sing Copacabana in front of the class.
Snerk.
My dad would have loved that. :eek:
In this case(that is, the one that prompted me to start this thread), it’s just a suggestion from a teacher to a parent. She went today, btw. We’ll see if it works. He(the student) is pretty embarassed about it, obviously. He’s a popular kid, so I imagine his self-esteem will recover 
Here, we can require parents to come to class with their kids. I’m not sure about the legal twists and turns, but the parents must do it and monetary compensation for time lost at work isn’t an issue. It’s not a solution for everyone and you have to follow through. I’ve had it happen twice to students of mine, but never requested it myself.
In the first case, it was a condition of a discipline contract. Last chance before the kid would be expelled. It sort of worked because the kid had the right sort of personality and his mom stopped excusing his rotten behavior once she saw the truth of the situation. Backsliding occured and next year it was guns, drugs, and gangs for the lil darlin’, but maybe if it had been tried a few years earlier?
In the second case, everyone was worried about low grades and minor discipline problems so it was just reccommended for a couple of days. The parent learned the class routines, sort of like an extended parents’ night. The student shaped up, focused much better and went on to glory.
I salute you for trying alternative methods to work things out. Teachers and schools have so few real tools at their disposal that it is nice to hear things being tried other than suspensions, which seem to solve almost nothing.
And obviously there is no one solution to fit all kids. I would be interested to hear if Aesiron could look back and think of what might have helped in his situation if this only made it worse?
It didn’t make my situation worse, it just made me resentful for a couple weeks and was ultimately pointless in that it didn’t make me do my schoolwork like it was supposedly going to.
And what would have worked? Nothing so far as I know. I’m just a naturally lazy person and I was still doing the same thing six years later when, in eleventh grade, I recieved a 27% as my final in Creative Writing and something like a 50% for my first grading period in Environmental Sciences. I did finally wise up my senior year though and pulled a 3.5 GPA no problem. Unfortunately, when factored in with my other three years, my cumulative was somewhere around a 2.5 at highest.
I was always “naturally intelligent but didn’t live up to potential” in school and I don’t think I went a year without getting lectured about it at least two or three times from teachers alone. I’m a little leery of that label though… it seems like every teacher says that about all their students.