Discipline Has Changed

Recently in my son's class a student , girl, was caught by the teacher using her cell phone to send a text message while he was teaching. The teacher immediately took hold of the cell phone and took the girl to the Principal's office. She was given punishment of staying back after school and do extra work. Needless to say this has raised a hue and cry all over. Some parents are upset with the "tough" discipline and some parents are upset by the lack thereof. I am on the side that's upset tougher standards were not imposed. But I am in the minority. When my son came back home and told us all this, my husband told him this girlwould have been caned where she studying some 20 years back in time.
Though in my school the kids were not caned there was still strict punishment given to erring students. But these days more than the students the parents get all upheaved by any punishment at all. According to some MOMS no punishment should be given and the student should be let off with a mild warning!
Have things changed the world over or is it just so in my nook and corner? I see more parents interfering with the duties of the teachers and standards and morale are low starting with the parents. Is it any wonder then the students follow the example at home than at school?

dear AC,
here now in bangalore all cell phone get conphesticated immediately if one is caught with one talking or sending sms and i think it is right of the authority to reprimand when this is done in the class, and the right thing to do is just take it away and ask the parents to pay a fine for not following the institutional rules, as there is a time for every thing, and education is better left alone than interference for the better future of the child...sunkan

I have to agree that this was a bit harsh for sending
text messages during class. Maybe a light warning and a policy to not do that better explained to student would have easily done the trick.

When I studied in India I have been verbally abused by
my teachers , beaten with a steel foot ruler and disciplined many times for trivial things.

They could easily get away with it because parents think
that schools need to be tough and should discipline the
students.

There are number of alternate ways to convey your
displeasure with a particular thing and those methods
work too.

There is no need to give harsh punishment for this kind
of simple thing. It cannot achieve anything meaningful.

The kids should realize that there are consequences but
they should only come in to play after a few warnings.

How would you feel if someone caned your son for doing
something wrong in school. Nobody is perfect. Every kid
will have some issues or other at school. Does all of them
need to be punished or caned?

Just a few weeks back I read stories about how a girl from minority community in India was labeled as terrorist for not doing her homework. He also have been said to knock kids unconscious by beating them with dusters. Is that the duty and right of the teachers? I think if they can only do that because there are people who believe that kids should be abused in the name of discipline.

I know exactly what happened in India 20 years back. I was caned, beaten black and blue, hit with steel ruler which caused injury that hurt me for a year. I was repeatedly called a "Dirty Hindu" by a Christian teacher for not using toilet paper since I went to catholic school. Teachers routinely called me idiot, duffer, donkey etc. I was routinely slapped. I was told to pay excessive monetary fines, kneel over for 3 hours outside the class with my notebook on my back, asked to go buy cigarettes for the teacher and even abused physically.

Is that something your husband was recommending for this girl? I don't understand that comment from your husband.

Luckily, My parents stood by my side and objected to every single thing I went through at school. They taught me that what my teachers did was wrong and they had no right or duty to treat me this way. It was life's strongest lesson.

There are ways that you can convey the same message to the kid without inflicting punishment.

You might think that confiscating the phone and making the kid work hard after the school did no damage to the girl but you probably don't know how she felt emotionally. They could have done significant damage to the child's confidence by doing that. That girl would probably be scared to death now of doing anything that could bring on the ire of the teachers.

AC,

I am there in the minority with you in this girl. These days we have enough distractions for kids not to focus in school. I agree that what the teacher did was correct, and i feel that staying back 3 hours after school to do extra work is no harm. After all schools get over by 2.00 PM here in the US and we can generally find kids hanging out on the road doing nothing good. Am sure exceptions are there too, but by and large the kids these days are a thing of their own. I have a friend who is a high school teacher here in CA, and the things she tells me about the kids, just wants me to take a cane to them Really!!!
And your hubby is right.
Indusguy, i studied in a catholic school too, although we did not have canning, the punishment for misbehavior was pretty stringent and no I was not singled out for being a hindu!! i think All AC's husband was trying to point out was that the girl got off lightly here at this point in time, than if she had been in a school in India 20 years ago ( oh i heard that they still do cane in some schools in India)
Come on, even now, my sons school, they give inquisition for misbehaving, and then once just cause one kid in the class was talking, the whole class got a punishment of having to do the whole week's home work all over again. My son complained to me about it, but hey i sided with his teacher and he was so disappointed.

These days with kids, we need to be one tough cookie.

So hang in there.

V

IndusGuy
I really appreciate you giving me yur point of view..I really never thought of it that way. The emotional side. Let me clarify what my husband said ; he as a student had seen some students get spanked. He had never gotten any punishment being top of the class but said it used to be common to get punishment when he was growing up. Its always refreshing for me personally to hear different points of view and I am glad you have expressed yours. Lets wait and see what others have to say to.. Thanks for writing in..

Originally Posted by sunkan

dear AC,
here now in bangalore all cell phone get conphesticated immediately if one is caught with one talking or sending sms and i think it is right of the authority to reprimand when this is done in the class, and the right thing to do is just take it away and ask the parents to pay a fine for not following the institutional rules, as there is a time for every thing, and education is better left alone than interference for the better future of the child...sunkan

my dearie sundari
I liked your last statement.. education left alone than interference! Truly if some parents dont try to interfer Teachers can do their job..now its scary for teachers to do their job..BTW what are u doing up so early?? Take some rest friend:)

Vandhana my lov
trust you and me to be in same boat (only my side is low due to weighty problem) ..hahaha
I too went to christian school and college where the Nuns were very strict but not much caning..I however got "kuttu" thats a knock on the head..
My sons class to got a grouppunishment and I sided with the teacher and that was end of story with him. Once the kid knows we are on their side then it takes a different shape and finally our kids get spoiled:)

In my school we used to get group punishments too. We got them frequently. I guess we were bunch of misbehaving kids back then.

The principal levied a fine of Rs10 (A huge amount back
then in 1980s) per student for any misbehavior any of the kids caused. This was mostly levied for making noise while the teacher was away from the classroom. It was only a few students that caused lot of ruckus. One of the kids whose parents were financially strapped faced enormous hardships due to these frequent fines. When I tried to point this out to the principal I was told that the fine was levied because other kids fail to snitch on their friends. They should have come to the principal and reported the trouble makers. The principal then proceeded to increase my fine to Rs15 per incident since I was the head of the class and failed to report trouble makers to the authorities.

Sorry! They were not making all that noise and they were my best friends who to date have stood by me. I think I made my decision to stand by my friends. When I told the poor student to report to principal to avoid fines he did just that. The principal continued to fine him in spite of this kid pointing out the trouble makers to him. After a while the trouble makers angry with this snitch decided to beat him up. In an effort to defend that kid I ended up destroying school furniture. The brawl was quite intense resulting in lot of bleeding to many students. Don't ask what happened after that.

I don't see how the school was making it any better by punishing the whole group?

I know schools use these tactics regularly but they only backfire. I see that some of you are from bay area. Can you please point out the names of the school that are doing this. This way I will know not to send my kid there.

Kids don't learn discipline and right behavior from their teachers. They learn it from you. I am what my parents taught me. If I had gone by my school's preaching I would be very different individual.

By not listening to your you son and by trying to justify what is wrong as right you have set a bad precedent for your child. He will find it very hard to trust you on such matters. Sometimes kids can think very clearly and can challenge you to think differently. Ignoring them would be a big mistake. My best friend was a guy from lower caste and my Grandma would repeatedly trash talk him and tell me not to play with him. I absolutely stood by my friend every time and ignored my Grandma. She was wrong and I was right. Being a child absolutely did not change that fact.

My mother was totally in to Ram worship. She would recite the whole Ramayan to me time and again. One day I argued with her that it was very wrong on Ram's part to judge Sita like that and put her to test. It was also grave error on his part to abandon her just because people kept talking. I told her that I have much less respect for Ram for what he did and I think Sita was supreme. My mother was totally taken aback by what I said. It was hard for her to digest what a fifth grader had to say about Ram but eventually she told me that she was happy to hear an alternative view point and that I set her thinking very differently.

Never underestimate the wisdom of little people. You can never be too wise and they can't be that stupid.

Originally Posted by anandchitra

IndusGuy
I really appreciate you giving me yur point of view..I really never thought of it that way. The emotional side. Let me clarify what my husband said ; he as a student had seen some students get spanked. He had never gotten any punishment being top of the class but said it used to be common to get punishment when he was growing up. Its always refreshing for me personally to hear different points of view and I am glad you have expressed yours. Lets wait and see what others have to say to.. Thanks for writing in..

I was always top of my class. That did not save me from punishment though. Actually, I may have gotten the worst due to being a defiant kid which the teachers usually hate.

I was hit with a steel ruler on my fingers for not doing the maths homework. I could not do my home work because my father was in Hospital for 2 years and on the night before Doctor's did not expect him to survive. It's hard to do your homework when your father is expected to die. Isn't it? And it was not like the teacher did not have any idea about my situation.

Its not like all the teachers I had were monsters. Actually I have had more good than bad teachers. The good ones really did a very good job even without lifting a finger or even shouting at us. Our English teacher was a fine example of that. She never shouted even once and did an excellent job. And I have had math teachers who taught me very well.

While I went to engineering school I made enormous amount of money tutoring rich math challenged children from 8th to 10th standard through their math exams. Parents could not believe that I could get them to pass by being so nice to them. Students who were labeled duffers did exceedingly well once I built the confidence in them that they were capable of dealing with Maths.

You might have memories of your teachers who were nice and taught you well. No reason why that cannot work. Teachers these days don't want to try.

I stand with you dear AC,


These days the disciplining in school has changed, despite having disciplining masters and all. Here the most threatening punishment would be 'given warning to the parents'. I heard from my friend that once for a mistake, the frustrated teacher threw the test paper on the student's(upper primary) desk and she(teacher) faced law suit last year.
And I see so many of the kids writing abusive comments about their teachers in the blogs/forums here. Even in the school online site, the primary kids have the audacity of posting abusive words abt their classmates even though their ID can be seen by the school teachers and schoolmates/parents.
I just tell my son everyday to respect his teachers and classmates and to abide by the school rules to avoid getting into trouble. And the 'Bullying" in school is all time rage here, I always am concerned that the school needs to up the punishments. I have hightlighted this to the teachers and his school principal too. As for the matter of cellphones, here the P3 kids do use them inside the school but I dont know abt the classrooms (have to wait for 2 more years to know abt such situations)