Teachers who punish the whole class because of the actions of a few.

What do you think of teachers who'll punish the whole class (extra homework, etc., etc.) because one or two students screwed up? Is it an effective punishment?

No it just sounds like someone who is too lazy or afraid to punish the problem child. It's the easy way out.

I think it's a very unfair punishment and essentially encourages bad behavior. If you punish me regardless, what incentive do I have to do good?

CeCe wrote:No it just sounds like someone who is too lazy or afraid to punish the problem child. It's the easy way out.

And it only causes everyone to resent you and know what sorry ass you are.

Teachers do that to be vindictive because they assume the class will wanna pounce on the culprits. If they gonna punish everybody for the actions of a few, then they should be rewarding everybody when one student is exceptional.

AtownPeep wrote:Teachers do that to be vindictive because they assume the class will wanna pounce on the culprits. If they gonna punish everybody for the actions of a few, then they should be rewarding everybody when one student is exceptional.

Oh they wanna do that too, in a sense. "Everyone gets a trophy." Both mentalities really tell the student that it doesn't matter if they do good or not. And that'll be about the only thing the schools will be teaching them too.

If people are going to insist to no end that schools are NOT a prison for children, why enforce the chain gang mentality on them?

AtownPeep wrote:Teachers do that to be vindictive because they assume the class will wanna pounce on the culprits.

It's more a last ditch effort to motivate the kid to straighten up, I think.

JM130ELM wrote:

It's more a last ditch effort to motivate the kid to straighten up, I think.

It's too late for that, everybody knows schools are just glorified babysitting anymore.

Supernova wrote:


It's too late for that, everybody knows schools are just glorified babysitting anymore.

Everybody does not "know" that. There are good educators out there. It is just unfortunate they are not in the vast majority.

Unless the teacher is this guy



or the rest of the class was encouraging the mischief, then no.

No punishment should be dealt out to the ones that deserved it in the first place, why should the whole class suffer for a couple of jerks.

Catholic schools are notorious for that--they think the peer-pressure aspect will get the unruly child to behave, if he/she sees how pissed his friends are that they too, got in trouble for something the one kid did. My daughter was in private/Catholic-based schools right up until 8th grade and I was constantly calling out the teachers for that bullshit--I actually told one teacher that we weren't paying them $5000 fucking dollars per year for tuition, to have my kid feel like a failure because of the antics of the class clown. Expel the little bastard and let the rest of the kids feel like they are worth something, and that their hard work is paying off, praiseworthy, etc. Positive individual reinforcement, not group whipping post.

Hyacinth Girl wrote:Catholic schools are notorious for that--they think the peer-pressure aspect will get the unruly child to behave, if he/she sees how pissed his friends are that they too, got in trouble for something the one kid did. My daughter was in private/Catholic-based schools right up until 8th grade and I was constantly calling out the teachers for that bullshit--I actually told one teacher that we weren't paying them $5000 fucking dollars per year for tuition, to have my kid feel like a failure because of the antics of the class clown. Expel the little bastard and let the rest of the kids feel like they are worth something, and that their hard work is paying off, praiseworthy, etc. Positive individual reinforcement, not group whipping post.

And how did the slap happy nuns react to that one?

Not unless the rest or majority of the class encouraged it.

Forgiveness Man wrote:I think it's a very unfair punishment and essentially encourages bad behavior. If you punish me regardless, what incentive do I have to do good?

I don't know. Let's go ask Job.

Last ditch effort to try and play on kids desire to not be unpopular is all it is.

Supernova wrote:

And how did the slap happy nuns react to that one?

Actually, there aren't many nuns left in the Catholic schools now--dying profession I guess, and all the ones, at least around here, are elderly and only do stuff like run the school libraries or act as teacher's aides. In my area, all the parochial schools have lay-persons as teachers/staff/administration but are governed by the Dioscese.

Chris wrote:What do you think of teachers who'll punish the whole class (extra homework, etc., etc.) because one or two students screwed up? Is it an effective punishment?

I don't see how effective it could be to penalize everyone else who wasn't on some bullshit, just because one kid was. It's basically the teachers way of trying to force the bad kid to get it right OR face being the object of derision by everybody for the extra work.

Forgiveness Man wrote:Oh they wanna do that too, in a sense. "Everyone gets a trophy." Both mentalities really tell the student that it doesn't matter if they do good or not. And that'll be about the only thing the schools will be teaching them too.

I don't think that's what he meant. I think this was referencing something more akin to if two students ace the pop quiz on Friday, then there is NO homework. Most teachers DON'T do things like that and if they would it wouldn't necessarily be teaching kids that it doesn't matter if they are good or bad.

In principle, I see NOTHING wrong with punishing the group for the failures of the few IF your goal is to get them to work together as a team to accomplish something. This is actually something that is done in the military quite often and it works. There is no "I" in team and a team is only as strong as its weakest link. If one of you fail, then you all failed! And if one of you can succeed, then you can all succeed (if you are a cohesive team). The problem with employing this tactic in a classroom environment is that MOST teachers are often not concerned with "teamwork" and consequently neither are the majority of students. It's usually an every man for himself mentality there, which makes collective punishments and collective rewards useless.

My answer to the original question is "it depends". It depends on exactly what kind of teacher you have and how often they stress (and reward) "teamwork". Only that would justify collective punishment and collective rewards to me.

BTW, FM - usually by the time you get to grade school, the "Everyone gets a trophy" mentality is gone. That is usually something that is done with toddlers and pre-schoolers and it makes sense at that age (where kids haven't developed reasoning skills yet). In grade school, you actually "place" during the science fair. You are "selected" for the basketball/kickball/cheer-leading team. Everyone does not get picked and everyone certainly doesn't get a trophy at that point. The only area where it could be said that every student gets a trophy is when it comes to the ease of standardized testing. You can thank our former President George W. Bush and his "no child left behind" garbage for that one!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/07/no-child-left-behind_n_1191206.html

Views noted.

captainbryce wrote:I don't think that's what he meant. I think this was referencing something more akin to if two students ace the pop quiz on Friday, then there is NO homework. Most teachers DON'T do things like that and if they would it wouldn't necessarily be teaching kids that it doesn't matter if they are good or bad.

In principle, I see NOTHING wrong with punishing the group for the failures of the few IF your goal is to get them to work together as a team to accomplish something. This is actually something that is done in the military quite often and it works. There is no "I" in team and a team is only as strong as its weakest link. If one of you fail, then you all failed! And if one of you can succeed, then you can all succeed (if you are a cohesive team). The problem with employing this tactic in a classroom environment is that MOST teachers are often not concerned with "teamwork" and consequently neither are the majority of students. It's usually an every man for himself mentality there, which makes collective punishments and collective rewards useless.

My answer to the original question is "it depends". It depends on exactly what kind of teacher you have and how often they stress (and reward) "teamwork". Only that would justify collective punishment and collective rewards to me.

BTW, FM - usually by the time you get to grade school, the "Everyone gets a trophy" mentality is gone. That is usually something that is done with toddlers and pre-schoolers and it makes sense at that age (where kids haven't developed reasoning skills yet). In grade school, you actually "place" during the science fair. You are "selected" for the basketball/kickball/cheer-leading team. Everyone does not get picked and everyone certainly doesn't get a trophy at that point. The only area where it could be said that every student gets a trophy is when it comes to the ease of standardized testing. You can thank our former President George W. Bush and his "no child left behind" garbage for that one!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/07/no-child-left-behind_n_1191206.html

I think, too, that it depends on each individual situation, and what the offense is that's causing the group punishment. Like you say, if the students are doing an assignment that requires them to work as a group or a team to complete it, then yeah, I can see cracking down on them as a group to refocus their attention to the task at hand. But, when you have one or two kids who are class clowns throwing spitballs, shooting elastics, dancing on the desktops and being generally unruly, then no, I don't agree with giving the whole class detention because of one asshole kid who's asshole parents don't parent and are blind the fact that they're kid isn't perfect, but is actually the one causing all the problems. That's my sticking point with this topic, and we dealt with that all through my daughter's early school years up to 8th grade--one kid or a few kids together, were the constant troublemakers, and when they decided to give a Saturday detention to the whole class because these little fuckwits were up to their usual antics, my husband and I stepped in and said no, our daughter will not be attending the detention, because she's a well behaved, good student, and it's unacceptable that she be punished for some stupid pranks these other kids were pulling.

There is no "i" in team but there is a "me".