27 ms·
"Because of Tim here's behavior, none of you will get recess. Now I'm going to take a bathroom break, and you think about that, Tim." Doubtlessly effective, b
by mapt 9y ago
"Because of Tim here's behavior, none of you will get recess. Now I'm going to take a bathroom break, and you think about that, Tim."
Doubtlessly effective, but is a culture of collective punishment, where we all beat the shit out of Tim for the next 15 minutes, really something you want to inculcate?
- colanderman 9y agoWhere did I advocate collective punishment? That is, as you say, terrible. To be clear, I find nothing wrong with Tim himself not getting recess. Individual punishment doesn't necessarily entail humiliation (which I think is the inference you're making).
- mapt 9y agoHumiliation isn't collective punishment, but it shares the same mechanism of action: Have the rest of the class gang up on this one miscreant, and it will be more effective than anything the teacher is allowed to do privately as punishment. Children are feeling out a malleable sense of ethics and a somewhat delicate sense of self-worth; Bullying is common enough without any kind of institutional support, and anything that directs them down this path, even gently, is pretty dark. We are biologically programmed by natural selection to see rejection by our peer-group as a life and death matter.