Never punish all

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Home : 2004 : February : 16

Never punish all
By Marsha

When my son was in elementary school he would come home upset on almost a daily basis because he got in trouble for someone else who was talking or some other rule violation. I would talk to the teachers and they all would
tell me that they punished everyone so that peer pressure would put a stop to the breaking of classroom rules. This, in my opinion, is a terrible thing to do to all the students because you can and probably are causing a lot of emotional stress on children who are extremely concerned over their own behavior. Also, you are probably causing students to turn on "the one" who caused then

to lose their ticket and believe me when I say these children can be cruel to each other. Stop group punishing and make each child responsible for their own behavior! That is the right thing to do! By the way, I now teach middle school, and because of what my son went through I make it a point to never group punish because it cause stress on the students that are always well behaved and also caused certain students to be tormented by their peers. Good luck in coming up with a better form of discipline for the classroom.