Ijnspired by the thread on self-centered kids, I thought that I’d start one on discipline
techniques which don’t work anymore.
Starting with the dunce cap. Not only would it not work because it would show
insensitivity towards the child in question, quite a few of them in this Age of Irony
would probably wear it as a badge of honor. Shame as a punishment doesn’t seem
to have much currency these days. I remember a Spanish class I had where a
number of the students seemed to recognize that they weren’t very good at it
(learning the language), and thus dubbed themselves “The Special Class”, which
tended to annoy the teacher a bit (tho she took it good-naturedly).
The older folks here can probably remember some stuff like that which authority
figures used to use.
Have litigious parents done away with kids being sent to the office to get the strap? I haven’t been to school for 31 years. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that now it would be grounds for a massive lawsuit and/or criminal charges.
Do they still send kids to stand outside in the hall? Make them stay to clean the blackboards?
Punishments at my son’s school are limited to detention, suspension and expulsion. No matter what you do, those are the only options. No eraser cleaning or community service or corporal punishment or dunce caps.
Oh, the gym teacher can assign push ups or running laps, but only during class, and only for his class.
ETA: No one is sent out into the hall, because no one is allowed in the hall during class, due to the school safety plans put in place in response to school shootings and terror alerts. All doors are locked during classroom time, and only unlocked for a fire drill or at the end of class.
I doubt that “go to your room” is much of a punishment these days, since the kid’s room probably has a TV, oodles of stereo music, a DVD player, a game machine or two, and a computer with Internet access.
If we stuck our tongue out in elementary school, we had to sit on a stool in the front of the class while the teacher taught and hold our tongue out for some set time (usually 5 minutes). I can’t see that happening today. Try it yourself without cheating. It is really hard and uncomfortable. Paddlings were better than that.
Doors in schools (at least the one’s I’ve attended) always just lock the outside handle. No one can get in the room but anyone that is in the room can get out.
When I was in Jr. High, I was a classic case of “not paying attention”. Straight F’s, didn’t get along with other kids, did weird things like balanced my backpack on my head going to and from class…
After a while, I got send to the Vice Principals office. He asked me, after a lot of questions and smart alec answers, if I thought that a paddling would change my behavior.
“Probably not,” I replied. “Besides, you need my mom’s permission, and you’re not going to get that.”
He looked at me pretty hard for a few minutes, then retrived a giant book (a tome, practically) that he literally had to blow dust off of.
He cited some rule whereby he could do it if he could get 3 witnesses, or somesuch.
I replied “And?”.
I got out of school suspension for a week instead. That sure shaped my grades up, lemme tell you. (not really)
Cascade County, Montana, 1988 or so.
But yeah, once I moved to California, I never even heard of it being used as a threat.
Heh - when I was a kid, lo those many years ago, the family joke was that the 'rents would send me outside to play with the other neighborhood urchins as punishment. I was a loner bookworm, so going to my room was fine by me.
There you go. It’s not the discipline that doesn’t work with todays kids, it’s the disciplinarians!
I think that if authority figures would deal out appropriate punishment judiciously yet unflinchingly, then it would work. And, you probably wouldn’t need to hit anyone, either.
I’m going to have to ask for clarification on this, honestly. It was my impression that it was a Willy Wonka scenario (“Nobody ever goes in, and nobody ever comes out!”) so that if a student themselves was the culprit, only the 29 other students in that room would be at risk - the rest of the school has TWO locked doors between them and the crazy person. But I could be wrong about that and the doors might be openable from the inside. I hope so. Frankly, the school building is so old that I can’t imagine any way to retrofit everything to have a central unlocking system.
But regardless, the “Sent to the hall punishment” is a thing of the past, as no one is allowed in the hall between classes, lest they be a shooter. There are no hall passes or bathroom passes - you go during lunch or passing periods. When I go for a mid-day conference with his teacher, the baby and I have to wait in the office until a passing period - we’re not allowed to walk in the hall to our appointment while class is going on.
I absolutely agree with you. OTOH, I don’t have many great suggestions otherwise, as far as security goes. “Keep a sense of proportion, people!” sounds great, but if, just IF someone does enter the school with intent to harm, the school has to show that they’ve done SOMETHING to try and minimize or prevent the damage. And the school does get at least a dozen bomb threats a year, and for every one, students are tromped out to stand out in the field for a couple of hours while the police sniff around and declare it all safe. It’s stupid, but really, what else can they do? If just one of those threats isn’t a bluff, they’re screwed, legally and financially, not to mention emotionally on the part of the person who decided, “Screw it, I’m sick of disrupting classes for these bomb threa–BOOM!”.
It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this AND that it’s affected discipline, but I don’t have the perfect solution to offer up at the next school board meeting. If you do, let me know and I’ll pass it along. It’s a seriously wacked policy for a seriously scared population.
I’m not really one for “punishments” anyway, as I’ve recently said. I prefer the logical, natural consequences of a kid’s actions to serve as their own negative reinforcement. That lets me be sympathetic and loving, without having to choose whether or not I’m the bad guy. Don’t do your homework? Wow, that really sucks…Guess you’ll be in fifth grade again next year while your friends are in sixth. How do you think you might be able to fix this? How can I help you do that?
But this only works if we get away from trying to insulate our kids from their own consequences. Social promotion, the “self-esteem” propaganda* and helicopter parenting do far more, IMHO, to break down discipline than the lack of the paddle.
*I have no problem with natural, appropriate self-esteem. It’s the inflated, artificial “everyone is a winner at everything” stuff that I think is damaging. I congratulate my kids and tell them how proud I am when they’ve done something I’m proud of. But I don’t hide from them their weaknesses, either. A weakness isn’t something to be ashamed of, it’s something to work on and strengthen.
