Humiliation 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 m

Humiliation 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.