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What disciplinary sanctions should teachers be

allowed to use?
Benjamin Chalmers

EACHERS need to keep order in their classrooms and

schools. To do this, it is sometimes necessary to discipline unruly students; those who break rules and cause
disorder. In order to examine the issue of where the boundaries
must be drawn - in this, the punishing of students - we
must first examine what our society deems as acceptable
punishment.
Our Judiciary system has a variety of methods by which
it punishes perpetrators of crimes. These methods are, on the
whole, seen as fair, just and corrective. The punishments are
as follows: Incarceration, which involves the detention of a
convict in a jail or correction facility; Community service,
where a convict is sentenced to labor in support of the
community they wronged; Fines, where a convict is forced
to pay reparation for the crime they committed and lastly;
Warnings and probation, in which a convict is officially warned
and will possibly be put under closer scrutiny in their actions.
Possibly involving a TAG or police visits.
These methods are what we use to punish criminals. So why
not apply this same sort of punishments to schools, where one
aim is to prepare pupils for life in the real world.
Punishments in schools do, however, need to be corrective.
This is because the school is there to prepare. This involves
allowing students room to correct their misconduct. This
means that punishments should only focus on justice, equity
and retribution in so far as to prepare students morally and
socially for the real word. All punishments should for this
reason mostly focus on correcting students and alerting them
to their failings; Not on finding some form of elusive justice
for a victim.
So the punishments I would recommend for schools would
be as follows:
To match incarceration, I would introduce detentions. A
teacher would force an unruly student who has done something
very disruptive or has repeatedly perpetrated an offense, to stay
in a classroom, against their will, during what would otherwise
be free time. As in the world, detention would be reserved
as the peak of all punishments and allows the criminal to
reflect upon their wrong doings. Much like in prisons, pupils
sentenced to detention should be given a corrective activity.
The process should be to reform. This reformation would, if
successful, stop the student from misbehaving in the future
and hopefully make them a better person.
To match community service is fairly obvious. We can take
students who have caused harm to the grounds and force them
to clean up their mess. In much the same way as vandals may
be sentenced to clean graffiti from walls. This punishment
would be there to teach students about the work needed to fix

their mistakes. It should make them think twice about their

behavior.
Next is to the fines. It would be absurd to charge schoolchildren - who have no method to earn money - fines, this means
we will need to find a suitable alternative. For a student
using a toy or a tool to cause havoc and disarray, it would
become appropriate for a teacher to temporarily deprive that
student of that toy or piece of equipment. This, though not
a perfect reflection of a fine, would help disable the students
from perpetrating any more crimes with the toy/tool and would
disincentives using toys/tools to misbehave. This is similar to
fines as it disincentives the activity.
Lastly is the Warnings and probation. In a school, this would
be if a teacher were to say This is your last warning. This
form of punishment is subtle but effective, in my opinion. For
a teacher to make a student feel that they have misbehaved
is surely the point of a corrective punishment. It also has
the imitate effect of stopping misbehavior. This method does,
however, require the use of the other methods; Threats do need
to appear credible and a teacher who just warns will never be
listened to.
In conclusion, punishments need to corrective and proportional. They should not focus on retribution and should attempt
to reflect punishments of the wider legal system.
681 words 40 mins