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Aiming for Discipline Instead of Punishment

Brain-aligned discipline isn’t compliance-driven or punitive—it’s about supporting students in creating sustainable changes in behavior.

There are many perspectives on the topic of discipline in our classrooms and schools, and I’d like to explore the idea of using brain-aligned discipline with students who have adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). 

Traditional punishment with these students only escalates power struggles and conflict cycles, breeding an increased stress response in the brain and body. Punishment is used to try to force compliance. The vast majority of school discipline procedures are forms of punishment that work best with the students who need them the least.

With our most difficult students, the current way schools try to discipline students does not change their behavior, and often it escalates the problems.

Discipline, unlike punishment, is proactive and begins before there are problems. It means seeing conflict as an opportunity to problem solve. Discipline provides guidance, focuses on prevention, enhances communication, models respect, and embraces natural consequences. It teaches fairness, responsibility, life skills, and problem solving. 

There are times when students need to be removed from the classroom and school for aggressive, volatile actions, but upon re-entry we should make a plan of action that begins to address these actions in these brain-aligned ways.

The neurobiological changes caused by chronic negative experiences and a history of adversity can trigger a fear response in the brain. As Pam Leo says, “A hurtful child is a hurt-filled child. Trying to change her behavior with punishment is like trying to pull off only the top part of the weed. If we don’t get to the root, the hurtful behavior pops up elsewhere.” In children the fear response often looks aggressive, defiant, and oppositional.

Young people with ACEs have brains that are in a constant state of alarm. In this alarm state, consequences don’t register properly. Discipline can only be done when both the educator and the student are calm and self-regulated. If they aren’t, behavioral difficulties will escalate. 

In a brain-aligned model of discipline, we must teach the behaviors we want to see, laying the groundwork for prevention systems and strategies. 

Preventive Brain-Aligned Strategies

Preventive systems are taught as procedures and routines. They are collaborative and filled with choice. Their purpose is to create a sustainable behavioral change, not just compliance or obedience for a short period of time. 

I teach students about their neuroanatomy, so they understand what happens in their brains when they become stressed, angry, or anxious. When we understand this, we feel relieved and empowered. 

In morning meetings or whole class time, I discuss the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and neuroplasticity with students. We identify and make lists of our emotional triggers and coping strategies, and I teach students to use their breath and movement to calm their stress response systems. 

Is there an adult in the school who connects with this student and has a space where the student can go if they need to regroup and calm their stress response systems? Are you teaching these procedures ahead of a time when a student needs to regulate away from the class? 

Could your school create a area for both teachers and students to go to when they need to reset their emotional state? This area could be stocked with paper, markers, crayons, water, soft music and lighting, a jump rope, a stationary bike, lavender scented cotton balls, jars for affirmations or worries, or a rocking chair. Students will need to be taught ahead of time how to use this area, which they should need for just two to five minutes in order to feel refocused and ready to return to class.

Examples of Natural, Non-Punitive Consequences 

Name-calling: Have the student create a book of positive affirmations for the class, or have them create a list of “kind words” and teach them to a younger class.

Low-level physical aggression (pushing, kicking, hitting): Some consequences could include giving the student a new learning space in the room or a new spot in line, or they could be tasked with performing an act of kindness or service for the hurt person.

If this occurs at recess, the student could be tasked with assisting a teacher on recess duty in monitoring the playground, noticing everything that is going well. They can roam around the playground, still getting the exercise they need. Or again they could perform an act of kindness toward the student who they hit.

Inappropriate language: This calls for a discussion when both student and teacher are in a calm brain state. Sometimes words that are inappropriate at school are used at home, so we need to understand the cultural context and have a discussion with the student.

An older student could research the words they used and report to you on why they’re not school words; younger students could try to write out what they were trying to convey using school-friendly language or drawings. 

Incomplete assignments: Have a one-on-one discussion to convey what this behavior communicates to you. Ask if something has changed at home or school, or if the student doesn’t understand what is required. Make a plan with the student and possibly a parent for making up the work that has been missed. And consider assigning a student mentor to help the student.

The research is clear. Our brains learn best in a state of relaxed alertness. Our discipline systems must begin to shift toward creating this state in all the members of our school community.

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Essay on School Discipline

Discipline is used in schools to keep students, teachers and other staff safe and to help meet the behavioral, social and emotional needs of the children as they grow and develop. Schools approach discipline in various ways and the severity of the discipline usually coincides with how severe the offense was.

Goal of Discipline

The main goal of discipline in schools is to teach children appropriate ways of behaving by giving consequences for making poor choices. For example, a student who doesn’t pay attention in class may have to spend recess time making up material that was missed. Discipline helps a student refrain from the behavior in the future.

The other goal of school discipline is to create a learning environment that benefits all students. By putting an end to behaviors that are not conducive to learning, teachers and administrators are able to create classrooms that are ideal for the educational needs of the children in the school. Types of School Discipline

Punitive techniques of discipline are the most common and involve giving an unpleasant consequence in response to a negative behavior. An example of this is when a child must move his desk to the front of the room after getting caught throwing pencils at other students. The aim is that next time the student considers throwing a pencil, he will remember the embarrassment of having to move to the front of the room while the entire class knows he is in trouble.

Zero tolerance is something that is used for more severe behaviors. Typically students are given warning or two before being given a consequence. However, the technique of zero tolerance means that no warnings are given and consequences are immediate. This type of discipline is used in cases of violence toward other students, drugs and other dangerous behaviors.

Some schools also use positive reinforcement, which is a technique that involves offering positive consequences for behavior that teachers and other staff want to see. For example, perhaps a student is given a sticker for turning in homework on time or is allowed to check out an extra library book for showing proper care of books. The goal here is to make proper behavior attractive enough that students want to make the right choices.

Effects of the Right Discipline Choice

The type of discipline a school chooses to use has an impact on the overall atmosphere and safety of the learning environment. In general, experts suggest a mixture of the types to create well rounded students who avoid undesired behaviors and instead gravitate toward the undesired ones. Discipline also creates structure and expectations for students, something that plenty of research says is ideal for teaching kids, both academically and socially, effectively preparing them for life beyond school.

Research Findings

According to the American Institutes for Research, students who are effectively disciplined, both positively and negatively, have a higher academic performance and are less likely to become part of the juvenile justice system as they get older. In addition, experts have found that discipline that occurs at school, rather than suspending students, further improves their performance in the classroom and helps keep them out of the legal system.

What Parents Can Do

School discipline is only truly effective if parents are willing to back up the decisions made by the school and help their child learn the proper way to behave at school. Parents should make a point of understanding the discipline used at their child’s school so they know what to expect and teach their child what to expect. Parents should understand that the rules at school may be different than the ones at home, but that kids are expected to follow the rules when they are in the classroom. Parents who partner with the school are the most likely to create students who behave appropriately at school and who don’t need much discipline to be successful.

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Essay on Discipline: Sample Essays of 100, 200 & 400 Words

• Updated on  
• Jan 23, 2024

Discipline is something that assists in keeping a person in control. According to Merriam-Webster ‘Discipline is control gained by enforcing order or obedience ‘. It also refers to orderly conduct or pattern of behaviour. Discipline motivates a person to progress and eventually achieve success. Hence, it is important. There are two types of discipline- induced discipline and self-discipline. An essay on discipline is usually given as a task in a school. Hence, we have provided sample essays on discipline in 200 words, 300 words, and 400 words. Keep reading to know more about the same.

To improve your essay writing skills, here are the top 200+ English Essay Topics for school students.

Table of Contents

• 1 Essay on Discipline (100 Words)
• 2 Essay on Discipline (200 Words)
• 3 Essay on Discipline (400 Words)
• 4 10 Lines on Discipline
• 5 Quotes on Discipline in Students Life

Essay on Discipline (100 Words)

Master the art of essay writing with our blog on How to Write an Essay in English .

Essay on Discipline (200 Words)

Also Read: Essay on Christmas: 100 – 150, 250, and 500 Words

Also Read: Essay on Politics in 500 Words

Essay on Discipline (400 Words)

10 lines on discipline, quotes on discipline in students life.

While writing the essay on disciple a student can include popular quotes. It can make their essays stand out. Moreover, reading quotes on discipline can inspire a student to be disciplined in their life, 

• What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do.”– Aristotle
• Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”– Jim Rohn
• “There is no magic wand that can resolve our problems. The solution rests with our work and discipline. ”Jose Eduardo dos Santos
• “Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.”– Abraham Joshua Heschel
• “For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories. ” Plato

Also Read: Essay on Technology

An essay on discipline talks about the importance of discipline in a person’s life. A disciple is something that keeps each person in control. It motivates a person to achieve success in their life.

Discipline means being consistent, and following the set rules or order. AA disciplined person will follow the written and unwritten rules. There are several unwritten rules in schools. A disciplined student will follow the written and unwritten rules.

A school discipline essay contains the introduction, body, and conclusion, A student needs to include the importance of discipline while writing the essay.

Check out our Popular Essay Topics for Students

Discipline refers to an orderly conduct or pattern of behaviour. It involves following the rules in a school or an organization. Self-discipline is also important for success in life. For more information on such informative essay topics, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu .

Blessy George

Blessy George works as a Content Marketing Associate at Leverage Edu. She has completed her M.A. in Political Science and has experience working as an Intern with CashKaro. She has written extensively on studying abroad, English Test preparation, visas, and online courses. During her free time, she likes to read and write poetry, and songs.

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Ending corporal punishment in schools to transform education for all children, schools are meant to be transformative spaces for children to learn and develop..

Schools are meant to be transformative spaces for children to learn and develop. But sadly, vast numbers of children around the world are subjected to violence in education settings, particularly as a disciplinary method. 

Corporal punishment, or violent forms of discipline, is a common practice at schools in many countries, administered by teachers and other staff. Evidence has revealed that this violence has no positive benefits, and is in fact a hindrance to learning – negatively impacting children’s cognitive development, contributing to lower academic achievement, and school dropout. This also carries the risk of long-term harm to mental and physical health and future prospects of individuals, families and societies. 

A new landmark report on school corporal punishment has been released by End Violence in partnership with Safe to Learn and the Coalition for Good Schools. The report explores children’s experiences of school corporal punishment, identifying where action is needed, and describing how progress can be achieved. 

THE SCALE OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN SCHOOLS

School corporal punishment is still lawful in 63 states worldwide – comprising approximately 793 million children or half of the global school-age population. 

The report highlights the many factors and dynamics that influence the prevalence of corporal punishment. 

It finds that the practice has been  prevalent across regions . For example, an analysis of research studies between 1980 and 2017 found that 70 percent of children in Africa and Central America had experienced corporal punishment in schools at least once in their lives. 

Corporal punishment is  influenced by gender . Most studies find that boys are more likely to be subjected to school corporal punishment, with male teachers tending to be more violent toward male students. For girls, violent punishment may be used to control behaviour and encourage timidity. LGBTQI students have consistently reported a higher prevalence of violence and bullying in schools. 

Education is of particular importance to marginalised and disadvantaged children, but corporal punishment is often  more prevalent in low-resource settings and schools, harming the education prospects of the children who need it most . Children with disabilities, refugees, migrant and racially marginalised children are also disproportionately subjected to violent punishment in school.

Safe schools can provide a protective barrier for continued learning despite a difficult external context such as a humanitarian crisis, giving children access to the knowledge that can lead to increased empowerment and better future opportunities. But sadly, violence reverses these possibilities. 

Research has found an  association between experiencing violent punishment in childhood with aggression, anti-social behaviour, perpetration of physical assault and criminality in adulthood . Children subject to corporal punishment in childhood are more likely to use it on their children when they become parents, creating cycles of inter-generational violence.

And this comes at a great cost to society. The World Bank and Safe to Learn investment case reported that  the cost of inaction on school violence including corporal punishment amounts to around $11 trillion globally in lost lifetime earnings . Its prevalence combined with its harmful impacts mean that investments in the vital benefits of education for children and societies do not always generate the best possible returns. 

LEGAL REFORM AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION 

The report stresses the importance of effectively implementing law reform. Prohibiting corporal punishment by law sends the clearest message that violent punishment of children is no longer acceptable in society. And legal reform is effective. Many countries with previously high levels of violent punishment in school have now ended or are close to ending the practice, helping transform attitudes to violence against children at scale. 

Alongside laws banning violent punishment in schools, it is also key to put prohibition into practice. Based on evidence and existing solutions, the report draws out best practices to implement law reform, including:

• creating awareness of the law, 
• adopting ‘whole school’ interventions that engage all stakeholders, from teachers to parents to address the issue 
• adopting positive discipline methods and 
• engaging adults and children to challenge harmful norms. 

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Essay on Discipline for Students and Children

500+ words essay on discipline.

Essay on Discipline – Discipline is something that keeps each person in control. It motivates a person to progress in life and achieve success . Everyone follow discipline in his/her life in a different form. Besides, everyone has his own prospect of discipline. Some people consider it a part of their life and some don’t. It is the guide that availability directs a person on the right path.

Importance and types of discipline

Without discipline, the life of a person will become dull and inactive. Also, a disciplined person can control and handle the situation of living in a sophisticated way than those who do not.

Moreover, if you have a plan and you want to implement it in your life then you need discipline. It makes things easy for you to handle and ultimately bring success to your life.

If talk about the types of discipline, then they are generally of two types. First one is induced discipline and the second one is self-discipline.

Induced discipline is something that others taught us or we learn by seeing others. While self- discipline comes from within and we learn it on our own self. Self-discipline requires a lot of motivation and support from others.

Above all, following your daily schedule without any mistake is also part of being disciplined.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

The Need for Discipline

Moreover, the meaning of discipline changes with the stages of life and priority. Not everyone can be disciplined because it requires a lot of hard work and dedication. Also, it needs a positive mind and a healthy body . One has to be strict to discipline so that she/he can successfully complete the road of success.

Advantages of Discipline

The disciple is a staircase by which the person achieve success. It helps a person to focus on his/her goals in life. Also, it does not let him/her derivate from the goal.

Besides, it brings perfection in a person life by training and educating the mind and body of the person to respond to the rules and regulation, which will help him to be an ideal citizen of the society.

If we talk about professional life then, the disciplined person gets more opportunities than the person who is undisciplined. Also, it adds an exceptional dimension to the personality of the individual. Besides, the person leaves a positive impact on the mind of people wherever she/he goes.

In conclusion, we can say that discipline is one of the key elements of anyone’s life. A person can only be successful if she/he strictly live a healthy and disciplined life. Besides, the discipline also helps us in a lot of ways and motivates the person around us to be disciplined. Above all, discipline helps a person to achieve the success that she/he wants in life.

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Essay on Discipline in School

Students are often asked to write an essay on Discipline in School in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Discipline in School

Importance of discipline.

Discipline in school is crucial. It’s like a tool that guides us to follow rules, behave well, and respect others. Without discipline, a school would be a place of chaos.

Role of Discipline

Discipline helps in maintaining order. It helps students focus on their studies, respect their teachers, and cooperate with their classmates. It’s the key to achieving academic success.

Discipline and Character

Discipline also helps in building character. It teaches us patience, respect, and responsibility. It helps us become better individuals and prepares us for future challenges.

In conclusion, discipline is essential in school. It helps maintain order, promotes learning, and shapes our character.

250 Words Essay on Discipline in School

Introduction.

Discipline is a cardinal virtue that forms the bedrock of any successful institution, notably schools. It’s not merely about strict adherence to rules but rather a self-imposed code of conduct that fosters a conducive environment for learning and character development.

The Essence of Discipline

Discipline transcends the classroom environment; it is a life skill that shapes one’s character and molds their future. It instills a sense of responsibility and respect for authority, time, and societal norms. It forms the basis for self-control, enabling students to resist distractions, thereby facilitating focus and productivity.

Discipline and Academic Excellence

There is an inextricable link between discipline and academic excellence. It promotes consistency and persistence, essential qualities for academic success. A disciplined approach to studies ensures regularity in attendance, timely completion of assignments, and effective time management. This systematic approach leads to better understanding and retention of knowledge.

Discipline and Character Development

Schools are not just academic factories; they are character-building platforms. Discipline plays a crucial role in this aspect. It helps inculcate values such as honesty, respect, and empathy. It fosters a sense of social responsibility, preparing students to be conscientious citizens.

In conclusion, discipline is an indispensable part of school life. It is the driving force behind academic success and character development. It helps in shaping responsible, respectful, and resourceful individuals who can contribute positively to society. Hence, fostering discipline within the school environment should be a priority for every educational institution.

500 Words Essay on Discipline in School

Discipline is the cornerstone of any successful institution, and schools are no exception. It is a set of rules and regulations that guide behavior, ensuring order and preventing chaos. It is a critical element in molding a student’s personality, shaping their character, and preparing them for future challenges.

The Importance of Discipline in Schools

Discipline in schools is not merely about obedience or adherence to rules; it’s about fostering a culture of respect, responsibility, and resilience. It is a tool that facilitates the educational process by creating an environment conducive to learning. It aids in the development of self-control, which is an essential skill for navigating life’s challenges and succeeding in personal and professional spheres.

Discipline also plays a pivotal role in instilling moral values, such as honesty, integrity, and respect for others. It fosters a sense of community, teaching students the importance of teamwork, cooperation, and mutual respect. These values are not only crucial for their academic journey but also for their lives beyond the school gates.

The Role of Teachers and Administrators

Teachers and administrators play a significant role in maintaining discipline in schools. They are the custodians of the school’s ethos and are responsible for setting the standards of behavior. They must lead by example, demonstrating respect, fairness, and consistency. Their role involves creating a positive learning environment, establishing clear expectations, and enforcing rules and consequences.

However, discipline in schools should not equate to a culture of fear or authoritarianism. Instead, it should promote a supportive atmosphere where students feel safe, respected, and motivated to learn. Teachers and administrators should use discipline as a means of teaching students about the consequences of their actions, helping them understand the importance of making responsible choices.

The Role of Students

Students, too, have a significant role to play in maintaining discipline. They must understand the importance of discipline in their lives and the consequences of indiscipline. They should take ownership of their behavior, learn to respect rules, and understand their importance in maintaining a harmonious learning environment.

Discipline should not be seen as a burden or restriction but as a pathway to success. It is a skill that enables students to manage their time effectively, focus on their goals, and develop resilience in the face of adversity.

In conclusion, discipline in schools is not just about rules and regulations; it’s about creating a culture that promotes learning, respect, and personal growth. It is a collective responsibility, requiring the participation of teachers, administrators, and students. With the right approach, discipline can be a powerful tool that prepares students for the challenges of the future, helping them become responsible, respectful, and resilient individuals.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Expert Commentary

Corporal punishment in schools: Research and reporting tips to guide your coverage

Two scholars offer guidance on covering school corporal punishment, which can result in serious injuries and has, for years, been used disproportionately on Black students and children with disabilities.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource August 31, 2023

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/education/corporal-punishment-schools-discipline-research/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

This tip sheet on covering corporal punishment in schools, originally published in March 2023, was updated on Aug. 31, 2023 to reflect the number of states that allow the practice and the results of a new study on public support for laws banning physical forms of child discipline. We also added a link to a policy statement the American Academy of Pediatrics released Aug. 21, 2023.

Despite academic studies noting the harms associated with corporal punishment, U.S. public schools use it to discipline tens of thousands of students a year, data from the U.S. Department of Education show .  

Public schools in 22 states reported using physical discipline on students during the 2017-18 academic year, the most recent year for which national data is available. The practice was most common in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Today, 18 states allow public school personnel to spank, hit or otherwise inflict pain on children to control their behavior, according to Elizabeth Gershoff , a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

Corporal punishment is legal in private schools in all but three states: Iowa, Maryland and New Jersey.

It’s not yet clear whether schools have relied on this type of discipline more or less often amid the COVID-19 pandemic. However, school district officials reported a marked increase in student misbehavior in 2021-22, compared with before the coronavirus arrived in the U.S. in 2019. News stories and research studies have documented the pandemic’s widespread effects on kids’ mental and physical health .

When the U.S. Department of Education surveyed public school districts in 2022, 84% agreed or strongly agreed the pandemic has negatively affected students’ behavioral development.

Almost 6 out of 10 public schools reported “increased incidents of classroom disruptions from student misconduct” and 48% reported increased “acts of disrespect towards teachers and staff.” About half reported more “rowdiness outside of the classroom.”

Even if the number of children physically punished at school has fallen in recent years, the issue warrants journalists’ attention considering the serious injuries students sometimes suffer and the fact that Black children and children with mental or physical disabilities have, for many years, received a disproportionate share of school corporal punishment.

The federal government requires public schools and public preschools to report the number of students who receive physical punishment. In 2017-18, public schools physically disciplined a total of 69,492 students at least once — down from 92,479 kids in 2015-16.

That year, public preschool programs, which are often housed within public elementary schools, reported using corporal punishment on a combined 851 children aged 3 to 5 years.

It’s unclear how common corporal punishment is in private schools because the federal government does not require them to report their numbers. Gershoff, one of the country’s foremost experts on corporal punishment, says she knows of no government agency or organization that tracks that information.

She urges journalists to help their audiences understand the various ways schools use physical discipline and its potential impacts on student behavior, mental and physical health, and academic achievement.

“Physical punishment in schools typically involves an adult hitting a child with a two-foot-long wooden board, known euphemistically as a ‘paddle,'” Gershoff writes in an essay published last week in The Hill. “Consider this: If a principal were to hit an adult, say a teacher or a parent, with a two-foot-long board, that person would be charged with assault with a weapon or aggravated assault. School personnel are hitting children with boards that, in any other context, would be considered weapons — and they do so legally.”

The global use of school corporal punishment

The U.S. is the only member of the United Nations that has not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child , an international treaty adopted in 1989 that, among other things, protects children “from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation.” Somalia ratified the convention in 2015 — the 196 th country to do so.

Globally, about half of all children aged 6 to 17 years live in countries where school corporal punishment is “not fully prohibited,” according to the World Health Organization.

But legal bans do not necessarily mean corporal punishment ceases to exist, a team of researchers from the University of Cape Town learned after examining 53 peer-reviewed studies conducted in various parts of the planet and published between 1980 and 2017.

In South Africa, for instance, half of students reported being corporally punished at school despite a ban instituted in 1996, the researchers note.

“There is also concern that school staff and administrators may underreport school corporal punishment even where it is legal,” they write, adding that a study in Tanzania found that students tended to report twice as much corporal punishment as teachers.

While there’s limited research on corporal punishment in U.S. schools, numerous studies of corporal punishment in U.S. homes have determined it is associated with a range of harms. When Gershoff and fellow researcher Andrew Grogan-Kaylor combined and analyzed the results of 75 research studies on parental spanking published before June 1, 2014, they found no evidence it improves children’s behavior.

In fact, they discovered that kids spanked by their parents have a greater likelihood of experiencing 13 detrimental outcomes, including aggression, antisocial behavior, impaired cognitive ability and low self-esteem during childhood and antisocial behavior and mental health problems in adulthood.

Gershoff says children who are physically disciplined at school likely are affected in similar ways.

“There’s nothing to make me think that wouldn’t hold for corporal punishment in schools,” she tells The Journalist’s Resource. “In fact, I think it might be more problematic in schools because of the lack of a strong relationship in the schools between the children and the person who’s doing the paddling.”

Other research by Gershoff offers insights into the types of misbehavior that lead to corporal punishment. She found that public school principals, teachers and other staff members have used physical punishment for a range of offenses, including tardiness, disrespecting teachers, running in the hallways and receiving bad grades.

Some children have been disciplined so harshly they suffered injuries, “including bruises, hematomas, nerve and muscle damage, cuts, and broken bones,” Gershoff and colleague Sarah Font write in the journal Social Policy Report in 2016.

The Society for Adolescent Medicine estimated in 2003 that 10,000 to 20,000 students require medical attention each year in the U.S. as a result of school corporal punishment. The organization has not updated its estimate since then, however.

Black students disciplined disproportionately

James B. Pratt Jr. , an associate professor of criminal justice at Fisk University who also researches corporal punishment, encourages news outlets to dig deeper into the reasons schools in many states still use pain as punishment.

He says reporters should press state legislators to explain why they allow it to continue, even as public health organizations such as the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention oppose its use. Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement stressing that corporal punishment “is not an effective or ethical method for management of behavior concerns” and calling for it to be abolished in all school settings.

News coverage of corporal punishment needs historical context as well, Pratt says. His research finds that school corporal punishment, which is most concentrated in the U.S. South, plays a role in sustaining a long history of racialized violence in the region.

“Tell the story of corporal punishment as a form of social control,” Pratt says. “There is research to illustrate how corporal punishment has been used historically and today.”

In the U.S., enslaved Black people were whipped, as were Black prisoners in the early 20 th century and Black children who went before juvenile courts in the 1930s, Pratt and his fellow researchers write in “ Historic Lynching and Corporal Punishment in Contemporary Southern Schools ,” published in 2021 in the journal Social Problems.

For generations after emancipation, white supremacists in the South whipped and lynched Black people to intimidate and control them.

When Pratt and his colleagues examined data on student discipline in 10 southern states in 2013-14 and lynchings between 1865 and 1950, they learned that school corporal punishment was more common for all students — but especially Black students — in areas where lynchings had occurred.

Pratt and his coauthors write that banning school corporal punishment “would help dismantle systemic racism, promoting youth and community well-being in a region still haunted by histories of racial terror.”

Guidance from academic scholars

Both Pratt and Gershoff have lots of ideas for helping journalists frame and strengthen their coverage of corporal punishment in schools. Here are some of the tips they shared with The Journalist’s Resource.

1. Find out whether or how schools in your area use corporal punishment, and who administers it.

Public schools generally share only basic information about corporal punishment to the U.S. Department of Education. School officials submit the total number of students they corporally punish in a given academic year and they break down that number according to students’ sex and race and whether they had a disability, were Hispanic or were enrolled in special programs teaching them to speak English.

Not only does the data lack detail — it does not indicate the type of corporal punishment used, for example, or the type of disability the student had — the information is several years old by the time the federal government finishes collecting it and releases it to the public.

Pratt says journalists can help researchers, parents and the public get a clearer picture of what’s happening in local communities by seeking out more details. To get a sense of how often and how local schools use corporal punishment, ask public school districts for copies of disciplinary reports and policies governing the use of corporal punishment.

Interview teacher union leaders and individual teachers to better understand what’s happening in classrooms and what teachers have seen and learned. Reach out to parents whose children have been disciplined to ask about student experiences.

“We know there’s something there, but how it functions on the ground is what we need to understand,” Pratt says.

Some questions to investigate:

• Which misbehaviors lead to corporal punishment?
• Who administers physical discipline?
• What are children hit with and how many times?
• Where on their bodies are they struck?
• How often have children been seriously injured and how were those situations handled?
• Have local schools been sued over corporal punishment?
• In areas where corporal punishment is banned, have school employees been disciplined or terminated for using corporal punishment?

2. Ask how schools’ use of corporal punishment and other forms of discipline changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Students, teachers and other school staff members experienced a lot of stress during the pandemic, as schools struggled to provide instruction and other student services while also monitoring and responding to COVID-19.

At the start of the pandemic, many schools closed their campuses temporarily and taught lessons online. When everyone returned to campus, the situation was, at times, confusing or somewhat chaotic. Many schools discovered they needed to rely more heavily on substitute teachers , who often do not have classroom management training, to fill in when regular teachers were sick, in quarantine or caring for loved ones.

It’s a good idea for journalists to try to gauge how such changes have affected student behavior and discipline. Local school districts and state departments of education should be able to provide more recent records than the U.S. Department of Education. Another source of data: colleges and universities where faculty are studying school discipline.

A September 2022 analysis from the University of Arkansas, for example, shows a sharp decline in several types of student discipline in that state since before the pandemic began. However, the authors write that they “cannot tell if the decline is the result of improved student behavior or inconsistent reporting by schools.”

“Corporal punishment was used [as] a consequence for 16% of infractions in 2008-09 and declined to being used in 3% of infractions in 2020-21,” they write.

Gershoff expects corporal punishment numbers to continue to fall nationally.

“69,000 is still too many kids being traumatized at school,” she says.

There are parts of the country where school officials in recent months have reinstated corporal punishment or voiced support for it, however. In 2022, the school board in Cassville, Missouri, voted to bring it back after two decades of not using it. And a school board member in Collier County, Florida , announced after his election last November that he wanted schools across the region to reintroduce physical discipline.

3. Learn the legal history of school corporal punishment in the U.S.

It’s important that journalists covering corporal punishment understand the history of the practice , including the stance the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts have taken on the issue.

Individual states have the authority to create and enforce discipline policies for children attending schools within their borders. Generally speaking, Supreme Court justices have been reluctant to intervene in the day-to-day operations of public schools, so long as educators do not heavily infringe on students’ constitutional rights.

Two Supreme Court cases decided in the late 1970s reinforced public schools’ right to use physical discipline. In 1975, in Baker v. Owen , justices ruled that public schools have the right to use corporal punishment without parents’ permission. In Ingraham v. Wright , decided in 1977, the court decided that corporal punishment, regardless of severity, does not violate the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

In writing the majority opinion for Ingraham v. Wright, Justice Lewis Powell asserts that “corporal punishment serves important educational interests.”

“At common law a single principle has governed the use of corporal punishment since before the American Revolution: Teachers may impose reasonable but not excessive force to discipline a child,” Powell writes.

The Supreme Court did not, however, explain what actions would be considered “excessive.” In 1980, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit established a test for determining that. Since then, circuit courts in several federal districts have required lawsuits challenging schools’ use of corporal punishment to meet that threshold, often referred to as the “shocking to the conscience” test.

Under that very high standard, corporal punishment is deemed excessive if “the force applied caused injury so severe, was so disproportionate to the need presented, and was so inspired by malice or sadism rather than a merely careless or unwise excess of zeal that it amounted to a brutal and inhumane abuse of official power literally shocking to the conscience.”

An example of corporal punishment a U.S. appeals court decided was excessive : A football coach in Fulton County, Georgia, struck a 14-year-old freshman so hard in the face with a metal lock, the boy’s left eye “was knocked completely out of its socket,” leaving it “destroyed and dismembered.”  

An example of corporal punishment an appeals court did not consider excessive : A teacher in Richmond, Virginia, allegedly jabbed a straight pin into a student’s upper left arm, requiring medical care. The court, in its ruling, notes that “most persons are with some degree of frequency jabbed in the arm or the hip with a needle by physicians or nurses. While it is uncommon for a teacher to do the jabbing, being jabbed is commonplace.”

Over the years, legal scholars have written multiple law journal articles examining the Ingraham v. Wright decision and its implications. An article by Michigan State University law professor Susan H. Bitensky , for example, looks specifically at its impact on Black children .

She argues corporal punishment has impeded Black children’s educations, undercutting the commitment to social progress the Supreme Court made when it decided in 1954, in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , that segregating public schools by race was unconstitutional.

“The whole foundation for [the Brown v. Board of Education] holding on segregated schools is a fervent concern that the schools should imbue children, especially black children, with a positive sense of their intellectual worth and should provide them with a commensurate quality of educational experience,” Bitensky writes in the Loyola University Chicago Law Review in 2004.

4. Explain that corporal punishment is a form of social control and that public schools use various types of discipline disproportionately on Black children.

Pratt stresses the importance of putting corporal punishment reports into context.

For many years, public schools have used that disciplinary approach disproportionately on Black youth, according to U.S. Department of Education records . But Black students also are disproportionately suspended, expelled, physically restrained and arrested on suspicion of school-related offenses.

According to the education department’s Civil Rights Data Collection ,  37.3% of public school students who were spanked, paddled or otherwise struck by school employees in 2017-18 were Black. Meanwhile, Black kids comprised 15.3% of public school enrollment nationwide that year.

As a comparison, 50.4% of corporally punished students and 47.3% of all public school students were white.

In public preschools, black children and children with mental and physical disabilities were disproportionately expelled.

Pratt says journalists need to help the public understand how school discipline and other forms of social control such as targeted policing programs and laws prohibiting saggy pants are connected. He encourages reporters to incorporate research into their stories to illustrate how implicit bias and misperceptions about Black children can influence how educators view and interact with Black students.

Research, for example, suggests white adults perceive Black boys to be older than they are and that prospective teachers are more likely to perceive Black children as angry than white children.

“All of [these factors] relate to one another and set the tone,” Pratt says. “This is a collection of harms, and a nefarious one.”

5. Check for errors in school disciplinary reports.

Several news reports in 2021 and 2022 indicate the U.S. government’s tally of children receiving corporal punishment at school may be incorrect.

An investigation the Times Union of Albany published in September reveals hundreds of New York public school students have been physically disciplined in recent years, even though the practice has been generally banned since 1985. State and local government agencies received a total of 17,819 complaints of school corporal punishment from 2016 to 2021, 1,623 of which were determined to be substantiated or founded, the news outlet reported.

“The substantiated cases documented in state Education Department records include incidents where teachers or other staff members pushed, slapped, hit, pinched, spanked, dragged, choked or forcefully grabbed students,” Times Union journalists Emilie Munson , Joshua Solomon and Matt Rocheleau write.

A May 2021 analysis from The 74 , a nonprofit news outlet that focuses on education issues, shows that schools in six states where corporal punishment had been banned reported using it in 2017-18.

Miriam Rollin, a director at the National Center for Youth Law, told The 74 that national figures “are likely a significant undercount.”

“Every school district in the country self-reports its data to the federal government and they’ve long been accused of underreporting data on the use of restraint and seclusion and other forms of harsh discipline,” Rollin told The 74 investigative journalist Mark Keierleber .

6. Press state legislators to explain why they allow school corporal punishment.

Gershoff and Pratt agree journalists should ask legislators in states that allow schools to use physical discipline why they have not stopped the practice.

“Tell the legislative story — who’s legislating this?” Pratt says. “Examine the people doing the work to end [corporal punishment] and also those wanting to maintain it.”

While a handful of members of Congress have introduced bills aimed at eradicating corporal punishment in recent years, none were successful.

In February 2021, U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida introduced the Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act of 2021 . But Hastings died two months later, and the bill never made it out of the House Committee on Education and Labor.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut introduced the Protecting Our Students in Schools Act in 2020 and 2021 without success. He reintroduced the legislation again in May.

Gershoff notes that many Americans want to ban school corporal punishment. More than 65% of U.S. adults who participated in a national survey on the issue in late 2020 indicated they agree or strongly agree with a federal ban, she and other researchers write in a paper that appears in the September 2023 edition of Public Health. At the same time, only 18% of survey participants believed most other adults feel the same way.

“Americans underestimate support for a ban, which may explain why folks have not been more vocal in calling for a ban even though they agree we should have one,” Gershoff wrote in an email to The Journalist’s Resource.

7. Look for stories in corporal punishment data.

Browse around the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection , which provides data on corporal punishment in public schools at the national, state and local levels as of the 2017-18 academic year. Notice trends, disparities and where there are unusually high numbers of corporal punishment cases.

For more recent data, reach out to schools, school districts and state education departments. Also, ask researchers for help explaining whether and how data from 2017-18 are still relevant.

Here are some data points worth looking into from the 2017-18 academic year, the most recent available at the national level:

• Mississippi led the country in corporal punishment cases as of that year. Public schools there reported using it at least once on a total of 20,309 students. In Texas, which had the second-highest number, public schools corporally punished 13,892 kids at least one time each.
• More than 30% of public school students who experienced corporal punishment in Indiana, Ohio, South Carolina and Wisconsin had mental or physical disabilities.
• North Carolina public schools didn’t administer corporal punishment often. But when they did, they used it primarily on Native American students. Of the 57 students disciplined this way, about half were categorized as American Indian or Alaska Native. Native American kids made up less than 1% of public school enrollment in North Carolina.
• Oklahoma is the only other state where a large proportion of corporally punished students were Native American. Schools there used corporal punishment on a total of 3,968 students, 24.4% of whom were categorized as American Indian or Alaska Native. Statewide, 6.6% of public school students were Native American.
• Illinois public schools reported using corporal punishment on a total of 202 students, 80.2% of whom were “English language learners,” or children enrolled in programs to learn English.

8. Familiarize yourself with academic research on corporal punishment at schools and in homes.

Gershoff points journalists toward a large and growing body of research on the short- and long-term consequences of corporal punishment at home and in schools. It’s important they know what scholars have learned to date and which questions remain unanswered.

To get started, check out these five studies:

Punitive School Discipline as a Mechanism of Structural Marginalization With Implications for Health Inequity: A Systematic Review of Quantitative Studies in the Health and Social Sciences Literature Catherine Duarte; et al. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, January 2023. This is one of the most recent papers examining the relationship between school discipline and student health in the U.S. The authors reviewed 19 studies published between 1990 and 2020 on punitive school discipline, which includes corporal punishment as well as suspension and expulsion. They find punitive school discipline is linked to “greater risk for numerous health outcomes, including persistent depressive symptoms, depression, drug use disorder in adulthood, borderline personality disorder, antisocial behavior, death by suicide, injuries, trichomoniasis, pregnancy in adolescence, tobacco use, and smoking, with documented implications for racial health inequity.” School Corporal Punishment in Global Perspective: Prevalence, Outcomes, and Efforts at Intervention Elizabeth Gershoff. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 2017.

In this paper, Gershoff summarizes what was known at that point in time about the prevalence of school corporal punishment worldwide and the potential consequences for students. She also discusses the various ways schools administer corporal punishment, including forcing students to stand in painful positions, ingest noxious substances and kneel on small objects such as stones or rice. She includes a chart offering estimates for the percentage of students who receive corporal punishment in dozens of countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Jamaica and Peru.

Spanking and Child Outcomes: Old Controversies and New Meta-Analyses Elizabeth Gershoff and Andrew Grogan-Kaylor. Journal of Family Psychology, 2016.

Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor analyze the results of 75 peer-reviewed studies published before June 1, 2014 on parental spanking, or “hitting a child on their buttocks or extremities using an open hand.” They state that they find “no evidence that spanking does any good for children and all evidence points to the risk of it doing harm.”

Other big takeaways: “In childhood, parental use of spanking was associated with low moral internalization, aggression, antisocial behavior, externalizing behavior problems, internalizing behavior problems, mental health problems, negative parent-child relationships, impaired cognitive ability, low self-esteem, and risk of physical abuse from parents. In adulthood, prior experiences of parental use of spanking were significantly associated with adult antisocial behavior, adult mental health problems, and with positive attitudes about spanking.” Historic Lynching and Corporal Punishment in Contemporary Southern Schools Geoff Ward, Nick Petersen, Aaron Kupchik and James Pratt. Social Problems, February 2021.

School corporal punishment is linked to histories of racial violence in the southeastern U.S., this study finds. The authors analyzed data on school corporal punishment in 10 states in that region during the 2013-2014 academic year and matched it with data on confirmed lynchings between 1865 to 1950. “Of the counties that reported one or more incidents of corporal punishment, 88% had at least one historic lynching and the average number of lynching incidents in these counties is 7.07,” the authors write. They add that banning school corporal punishment in these states would “help dismantle systemic racism, promoting youth and community well-being in a region still haunted by histories of racial terror.”

Disproportionate Corporal Punishment of Students With Disabilities and Black and Hispanic Students Ashley MacSuga-Gage; et al. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 2021.

When researchers looked at student discipline in the 2,456 U.S. public schools that had used corporal punishment at least 10 times during the 2015-16 academic year, they discovered that children with disabilities were almost two times as likely to receive corporal punishment as students without disabilities. The finding is troubling, they write, considering the U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act recommends schools use a behavior modification strategy known as Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports when students with disabilities misbehave.

The researchers, from the University of Florida and Clemson University, also found that Black students without disabilities were twice as likely to be physically disciplined as white students without disabilities. Meanwhile, schools were less likely to use corporal punishment on Hispanic students than white, non-Hispanic students.  

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Punishment in Schools Essay Example

In the today’s society, people are associating corporal punishment at schools with a physical abuse. However, the distinction between these two ones is significantly narrow. Corporal punishment can leave a lasting impression; and it could be described as a borderline child abuse, dependent upon an object or a method of administering corporal punishment. Punishment administrators at schools including teachers may opt to use a paddle, a hand, a switch or any other object that has the capacity to inflict physical pain.

This is done without any consideration of potential risks that hitting or inflicting physical pain to a child might have in the present or future. Though, in the past, corporal punishment was deemed to be an effective method of punishment; the extent and mode of application may have the varied outcomes. Therefore, this paper will argue that corporal punishment is morally wrong and should be not be used as a form of punishment at all schools.

Why Punishment in Schools Should not be Permitted

There are two factors that must be taken into account when administering discipline at schools including how to distinguish between abuse and corporal punishment (Arum 145); intention and intensity. Intensity describes the degree within which corporal punishment has the capacity to cause physical injuries; while it refers to the degree within which an educator is willing and capable of using corporal punishment as a discipline enforcement tool. Intensity of corporal punishment often refers to the severity of injuries that have occurred from corporal punishment such as spanking. For instance, spanking a child until they welt, or have bruises, is inherently child abuse and not punishment.

According to the article “Teach, Don’t Hit!”, “parents resort to corporal punishment for different reasons;” some consider this as being “appropriate to children’s education; because it relieves tension or because they lack sufficient resources to tackle a situation or do not have strategies for achieving what they want” (UNICEF). In my opinion, such arguments are unfounded. They appear more of an individual issue but not a factor that should influence the policy of education and discipline at schools.

In the modern society, people are scared to discipline their children in public when it comes to using corporal punishment since it may be perceived as child abuse and a reason for the intervention of child’s services and authorities (Regolli, Hewitt, and Delisi 263). Consequently, corporal punishment is more prevalent at home than at schools or public places as compared to several decades ago. Parents often use a threat of corporal punishment to deter the wrongdoing on the part of their children. The assumption here is that parents are afraid to use corporal punishment in public for fear of either being reported to social services or perceived as abusive parents. Although there are various repercussions and potential instances of abuse from the use of corporal punishment at schools, the administration of punishment must be regulated to deter incidents of abuse or a physical and psychological injury to students (Niolon).

However, the proponents of corporal punishment argue that without such punitive measures being taken children or students would become arrogant and disrespectful of their teachers. As such, they would be uncontrollable; hence, the development of negative attitudes and behavior. In various modern societies, the application of corporal punishment may result in severe repercussions to a school and a responsible educator since they would be perceived as condoning child abuse at schools. Meanwhile in other societies, corporal punishment is allowed at schools since it is believed to the epitome of instilling discipline in unruly, uncontrollable and errant students (Pate and Gould 151). In the past, most parents did not wait until their children got home to administer any type punishment. If children misbehaved or erred in a public place, they were warned once. If the behavior did not change, then corporal punishment was administered forthwith. In the current society, if someone were to see that, he/she would probably call the police to report a parent’s action as child abuse (Regolli, Hewitt, and Delisi 263).

A significant number of schools have banned corporal punishment; therefore, teachers experience the hard times disciplining children (Niolon). While I argue corporal punishment is not an effective form of punishment at schools as a punishment itself, other forms of punishment should be used in cases where students are errant. As such, strict and consistent punishment should be administered to errant students and children. There are various news media that constantly uncover the extent of violence at schools. However, the cause of such violence at schools cannot be addressed through a violent response towards students.

Errant behavior could be a factor of varied reasons including mental health issues, social awkwardness and interactions with parents, peers or friends (Regoli, Hewitt, and Delisi 265). Proponents of corporal punishment argue that there is a significant increase in disciplinary and disrespect at schools, in modern societies than several years ago. This is because students know their rights and may use such knowledge to deter corporal punishment. Furthermore, a significant number of parents do not condone physical punishment on their children and any incidence of corporal punishment may result in a legal tussle between a parent and a school (Bitensky 80).

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Teachers have to tread carefully when dealing with disrespectful children. They are not allowed to raise their voices as this is considered a verbal abuse; they cannot spank since this is considered a physical abuse, which could cause the teacher and school to be sued. “Emerging research suggests corporal punishment in schools may harm a child’s cognitive ability” (Nauert). As the child is growing up, your only job is to learn and enjoy life. “If children are exposed to corporal punishment in a learning environment, they may have long-term detrimental effects on children’s verbal intelligence and their executive-functioning ability” (Nauert).

In the study of 63 first graders and kindergarten children, the researchers, Victoria Talwar and Kang Lee, have observed one school that was using corporal punishment while the other employed a different strategy of issuing verbal reprimands and time outs on errant children (Nauert). The researchers found that there were no changes in the overall performance depicted by the kindergarten children at both schools. However, first grade children illustrated different results. According to the researchers, the corporal punishment does not have an impact on the determination of behavior or learning ability in children. Furthermore, they have determined that, in a short term, corporal punishment may not have any visible negative outcomes. However, when it remains as a sole disciplinary action over a long period, it may not have any impact on the development of the child’s ability to inhibit bad behavior, learn or develop skills for solving problems (Nauert). Therefore, the teacher’s use of reasonable corporal punishment in a lenient manner will not affect the student; however, the constant use of corporal punishment may have mental repercussions that may linger in the child’s later life as an adult.

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Children depict different reactions in towards overcoming corporal punishment. If corporal punishment is carried out at home, and it affects the child’s behavior at school, then it can interfere with the learning ability. In the event that children are unable to learn their learning and cognitive skills will lag behind with respect to other students and could lead to one of two things, bullying or becoming an outcast; these can also occur if the kid is subjected to corporal punishment in the home environment (Pate and Gould 76).

There are other options for punishing children other than corporal punishment. The most common of which is time out. This form of punishment teaches the child that his or her action has some consequences without a physical action like a spanking. For any non-physical punishment to work one has to be consistent, firm and authoritative, and the rules set must be clear, concise and fit the action for which the child is being punished (Carter). Additionally, when administering time out punishment, teachers and parents should make an eye contact with children.

I submit that there are various side effects to corporal punishment; some are very severe, and others are temporary. The worst of the side effects is the occurrence of suicidal thoughts, aggression, and a child-parent relationship (Alvy). The aggression can lead to many things later on in life like being that bully at school or bullying their siblings. The use of corporal punishment against aggression is like fighting fire with fire. Spanking a child for bullying another is essentially doing the same thing by using that form of punishment (Arum 146). I believe children live what they learn; and, at this stage in their life, they are soaking up everything around them trying to find themselves. When the child is hit for doing a wrong thing, that cycle continues, because, the child now thinks it is ok to hit another if he or she feels that person is not doing right.

There are few side effects that linger on into adulthood. If a parent tends to go overboard on the spanking that could transfer to the child’s mental stability; and they could become abusive towards their own family. According to various studies, “33% of all individuals, who were abused or neglected in childhood, will abuse their own children in some manner” (Worell 222). Also, parents, who tend to be abusive, use their past as a guide to child rearing or an excuse for abusing their children.

Corporal punishment also has an impact on the today’s society “corporal punishment increases the use of violence in the society and legitimizes it in the eyes of succeeding generations” (UNICEF). This means that when kids see a parent or an adult hit or strike someone in anger, they think it is ok to do the same. If this problem is not fixed, or the parent does not teach that child right from wrong, it could lead to that kid being abusive towards others. There are also parenting classes open to the general public which can teach many other techniques to punishing your child (Alvy). Colleges, schools and hospitals have parenting classes that are available to the general public; furthermore, parenting classes can be taken online. These classes are proven to be effective; and now courts are ordering abusive parents to take these classes so they can learn how to be more effective without using corporal punishment.

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Discipline is important for the safety and physical well-being of the child as well as for his or her social, emotional, and cognitive development (Bitensky 12). However, discipline and punishment are not synonymous. Some parents and teachers rarely resort to punishment. Some punitive parents and teachers are poor disciplinarians. Discipline is administered with the aim of providing a child with outside control until he or she can develop the inner or self-control to function as a mature adult. Corporal punishment can impact students academically; as such, a harsh physical punishment does not improve the students’ academic or behavioral performance at school (Regolli, Hewitt and Delisi 224). Recent studies have shown that in the states where there is a high prevalence of corporal punishment; schools perform worse than those in the states where corporal punishment is prohibited. Spanking and other physical punishments for kids are linked with antisocial behavior in adults, including the increased aggression (Pate and Gould 71). Many children who have subjected to harsh disciplinary practices have problems with anger, fear, and depression.

Corporal punishment may cause a real injury or it can result to child abuse. Related to child abuse, the problem is that parents and teachers may apply corporal punishment solely because they are irritated or frustrated, not because corporal punishment is appropriate. In many occasions, a teacher may feel the need to hit someone and vent his or her frustration on an innocent child. I would not want my child to be punished for the simple reason that the teacher might be frustrated one day, especially if I had no control over how physically punished they had been. If corporal punishment were to be used, there should be some guidelines administering them. The use of a more logical consequence constantly is among the critical guidelines of behavior management. Corporal punishment should not be administered in the high state of arousal resulting from frustration, anger, or some other emotions that could lend a spirit of retaliation towards students (Regolli, Hewitt, and Delisi 188). Corporal punishment should not be used when a more appropriate technique is available. Ideally, this would out rule the use of this punishment completely; however, there are many times where it has to be used. When administering corporal punishment, the person that is taking the action should punish the behavior and not the person.

At all times, corporal punishment should be applied in front of witnesses. If it has been used too often, it is considered that something else should be tried. Even though I do not agree with the corporal punishment practice, there should always be some guidelines when it is put in practice. Corporal punishment has the capacity to lower the child’s self-esteem; it also teaches children to be victims (Alvy). Additionally, it may lead a child to feeling lonely, stimulate anger and possibly cause students to run away from home. Exposure to violent behavior in childhood can have deep-seated and lasting effects on the attitudes towards violence (Bitensky 174). It is believed the more the child is subjected to violence in childhood, the greater his approval of violence in the adult life is.

Appropriate guidelines administering the restrictions and safeguards of this technique of punishment, it is sometimes admissible. Although there are some positive aspects of this practice, the research has shown that it is not better than any other form of punishment. Corporal punishment can affect a child physiologically. There are many cases of a serious injury to a student. Still being legal in the United States, corporal punishment should not always be used (Niolon); instead an alternative measure should be taken. I cannot deny that there are some advantages, but the times have changed. The modern generation has come up with some ways to administer behavioral problems more efficiently. Corporal punishment should not be used in classrooms today.

Corporal punishment has lasting effects on children either positively or negatively. The results of corporal punishment not only affect children; it has an adverse effect on parents and the society as well. The immediate aims of such punishments are to deter the errant behavior and encourage the child to behave more appropriately. However, corporal punishment is not the answer; there are other alternative ways. Now that we are starting to realize there are more ways to punish a child than to use corporal punishment, we must do what is reasonable and be better educated on the ways to discipline. We have to learn how to be firm and authoritative; give positive reinforcements, and finally watch what we say and do because children live what they have learned and emulate what is in their immediate surroundings.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Corporal Punishment — The Controversy of Corporal Punishment in Schools

The Controversy of Corporal Punishment in Schools

• Categories: Corporal Punishment

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Words: 568 |

Published: Feb 12, 2024

Words: 568 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, exploring alternatives to corporal punishment, understanding the adverse impact of physical abuse, examining corporal punishment in public schools, looking towards a solution, works cited.

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Crime and Punishment, Essay Example

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Words: 301

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Crime is a violent act with an aim of hurting other individual. The aim of a crime is to destabilize the peace and tranquillity of the society. There are various aspects that make up a crime. They include:

• The nature of the crime
• The motive of the crime
• Whether the culprit was caught or not
• The punishment
• The reason of the punishment
• The effectiveness of the punishment

The above aspects are vital in understanding crime and punishment. Crime has origin like any other thing in existence. There are theories that have been brought up to understand crime with an aim of stopping it. These criminals behaviour are known to have been triggered by something to do these acts of violence. There are some French and Italian thinkers who have come up with various schools of thought to understand crime and the motives behind them. These thinkers have been able to understand the minds of criminals. Understanding the minds of the criminals can lead to early prevention of crime (Tonry, 2000).

The punishment for the crimes is something that has evolved through the ages. The punishment was meant to change the behaviour of the perpetrator and was to be fitting to the crime. This is something that initially brought up a lot of problems since the perpetrators came out not reformed. It is something that has changed over the ages as various reformers have come up to change the status quo.  These reformers made a significant difference and the change was positive. The main reason for punishment is being achieved now. This is now up for debate since change comes from an individual choice to change their habit and behaviour ( Dostoevsky, 2004).

Tonry H. Michael . (2000). The Handbook of Crime & Punishment . Foster City, CA: Oxford University press.

Dostoevsky F. (2004). Crime and Punishment Enriched Classics . Kentucky: Simon and Schuster.

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The Surprising Connection Between Universal School Meals and Student Discipline

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For Raniya Fisher, a senior at Ridgeland High School in Mississippi, lunchtime is about more than eating, it’s a time to recharge and build relationships.

Raniya, who plays basketball, eats in the gym with her teammates as way to build team cohesion. But she still goes to the cafeteria for a free meal, where she looks forward to her daily chats with the lunch ladies.

Raniya qualifies for free- and reduced-priced lunch, but she knows people at her school who don’t and struggle to afford lunch. She thinks school meals should be free for everyone.

“If you don’t eat at lunch you are just starving, and little things like that are a distraction,” she said. “The teacher could ask you one simple question, and you get mad, and you could get in it with the teacher because you didn’t eat lunch! You might be a little sleepy, but [when] you’re full, you’re in a positive attitude and ready to do your work.”

Now, a body of research supports the idea that giving free school meals to all students can be an important ingredient to nurturing a healthy school climate. Among new significant findings: The policy is linked to lower discipline rates among students because it reduces the stigma around receiving subsidized meals.

Whether it’s from the sustenance or the sense of community they provide, universal lunch appears to support many of the factors that make for a positive school climate, such as reducing discipline rates, tamping down on bullying, improving attendance, and alleviating the stigma for students from low-income families.

“There is a very important social dimension, which is when you are in the lunchroom, [universal meals] take away this mechanism of pointing out who is poor,” said Amy Schwartz, a professor in Joseph R. Biden School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware. “Instead, you say, ‘we’re at school, we eat together, and this is what we eat.”

Students who are hungry have a harder time paying attention, and are more likely to act up in class, which affects both their ability to learn and behave, said Schwartz, who has studied the effects of universal free school meal programs in New York City. And there are a lot of students whose families make too much money to qualify for free- and reduced-priced meals but still struggle to afford food.

Taking away that stigma of qualifying for free and reduced priced meals may also drive down discipline rates.

Students—and teachers—can usually figure out who is getting subsidized meals from school, said Thurston Domina, a professor at the University of North Carolina’s school of education.

“We’ve got good research to suggest that students see that and that they associate school meals with poverty,” Domina said. “And we’ve got good research to suggest that stigma associated with poverty carries with students throughout the school day.”

Changing behavior—and perceptions

To isolate whether the stigma of receiving free and reduced priced meals played a role in discipline rates, Domina and researchers from the U.S. Census Bureau examined schools in Oregon, comparing those that started offering universal free school meals through the federal school meals program’s community eligibility provision to those that did not. By linking school data on free and reduced-price lunch enrollment and discipline referrals to data from the census and tax records, they were able to get a granular look at how the policy affected different students.

Complicating matters, students who do qualify for free or subsidized meals may not be receiving them, and, conversely, sometimes students whose families are too wealthy to qualify still end up enrolled in the federal meal program.

Providing universal free meals had the biggest effect on discipline rates, lowering them among kids who had received free- and reduced-priced meals prior to the adoption of the policy, and regardless of whether they were actually low-income or not, Domina said. That means it’s likely that removing the stigma of being labeled a poor kid is what drove down suspensions among those kids.

Removing that label may affect students’ behavior, he said, but it can also change teachers’ perceptions of their students leading to fewer suspensions.

In Domina’s view, “I think our findings are really encouraging for efforts to get free meals to more students,” he said. “I think getting nutrition into kids’ bodies is just a good thing for a society to do. And I think that our research suggests that doing so can help create happier and healthier and more egalitarian social environments in schools.”

Universal free school meals can also help improve attendance rates, said Schwartz, for a couple of different reasons: Attending and eating at school means families spend less money on groceries at home. A positive lunchroom experience free of stigma contributes to a better social experience overall, which means they might be more likely to be engaged in school and show up, Schwartz said.

“This isn’t the solution to our attendance problem, this isn’t the silver bullet, but you expect that it would help. Free school meals are the gift that keeps on giving in a bunch of different dimensions,” she said.

Additional research has found that universal free lunches may reduce bullying. And all of that contributes to a positive school climate, Schwartz said.

Chris Young, the principal of North Country Union High School in rural Vermont, can’t think of a particular instance of a student getting bullied for eating school meals, but his sense is that students internalized the label that they were poor.

“It would be hard to connect what a student is feeling to any behaviors—it could go either way,” he said. “They might act out, but they might be much more likely to be withdrawn and go into their shell.”

Kids who don’t qualify for free school meals often brought leftovers from home or go out for fast food, while students from low-income families sat in the lunchroom with cafeteria trays, Young said.

But now his school provides free breakfast and lunch to all students regardless of income. Vermont is among a small number of states, including California, Minnesota, and Massachusetts, that adopted universal free school meals following the pandemic.

Now that meals are free for all students, even those kids who can afford to eat out usually opt for the free meal, Young said.

“Kids are like, oh, well, if the meal is free, I’m just doing [that],” he said, and it’s improving the school’s culture. “It’s much more of a community when more kids are taking advantage of the school lunch program.”

Using the lunchroom to improve school climate

Young has leveraged the lunchroom in other ways to bolster his schools’ climate. When students returned to full-time in-person learning following the pandemic, Young replaced the long lunch tables with circular ones to encourage more conversation and connection among students as they made the transition from remote and hybrid learning.

Finally, the universal policies can catch students who fall through the cracks of the current system, said Schwartz. That’s the case for Kearston May, another high school student at Ridgeland High School in Mississippi, who said she skips lunch when the balance on her school meal account is getting too high.

“Sometimes I have to pick and choose my battles based on what I have in my lunch account and what I have to do that day,” said Kearston, who is in 11th grade and plays on the school’s volleyball team.

“On my athletic days, I try my best to eat. We are doing running and weightlifting, and knowing from past experiences not having something in your stomach can be very challenging,” she said.

On the days she doesn’t eat lunch, Kearston said she is drained by the end of the school day. She is thankful that the lunch ladies give her food even when she is in debt and give her a heads-up when the balance is getting so high it might be a problem. Students in her situation, Kearston said, are going to struggle in school.

“They are not thinking about school, they are not willing to learn,” Kearston said. “I think a free meal is one less thing to worry about.”

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'Beat them in a circle': Robinson touts corporal punishment but won't say if it belongs in schools

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has said a loving approach to discipline misbehaving children is to “beat them in a circle,” but his campaign won’t say if he thinks schools should bring back corporal punishment.

In several speeches at churches last year, Robinson made the comment while discussing the concept of love.

“We have perverted the word love,” Robinson told an audience at Trinity Baptist Church in Mooresville in March 2023. “We don't understand the word love. We don't understand what love really is. We think love is sunshine and rainbows, and put your arms around somebody saying ‘I love you, brother’ — certainly that's a form of love.

“But how many of y'all know when you hold your young’un by one arm and beat them in a circle, because they were bad — how many of you know that's love too?” Robinson mimed a spanking motion as he made the comment, video of the speech shows .

He made similar comments at Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem last fall, saying that “love is taking that young’un that got out of line, and holding them by the arm and beating them in a circle. So a lot of people in our society right now, they never had their arm held and been beat in a circle, and it shows.”

Robinson frequently calls for increased discipline in schools, so the comments raise questions about whether he’d support the use of corporal punishment to address the problem.

Asked repeatedly about the Republican nominee for governor’s stance on corporal punishment in schools, Robinson campaign spokesman Mike Lonergan did not address the topic directly. Instead, he pointed to another comment Robinson made during the Trinity Baptist speech.

“That man or women that goes down to the school board and declares ‘you will not abuse my children,’ in front of God and everybody else, that is love,” Robinson said at the time.

The “beat them in a circle” remark, Lonergan said in an email, is “just another thirty-second clip from a Democrat tracker twisted completely out of context. He was speaking at a church talking about themes like love and sacrifice — even condemning abuse in the same speech.”

A video of the full speech is posted online here (the remarks on love and discipline begin around an hour into the video).

Robinson's Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, said he's opposed to corporal punishment in schools.

“Corporal punishment in our public schools is not the answer to behavioral issues," he said in an emailed statement when asked about the topic. "Every classroom should have a good teacher and every school a strong principal. And they need the support of more school counselors, social workers and nurses to help address student challenges."

North Carolina law still allows for corporal punishment in schools, but no public school districts have used the practice for the past five years, according to a report from the N.C. Department of Public Instruction .

Robeson County was one of the last school districts to end the practice ; its school board voting to stop paddling misbehaving students in 2018.

Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement reiterating its previous recommendations that families and schools cease using corporal punishment.

“There are many alternatives to corporal punishment at our disposal that are effective and nonviolent,” Dr. Mandy Allison said in a news release from the organization. “While a child or teen might become fearful and obedient in the short term after being struck, we know that over the long term, corporal punishment does not improve behavior and in fact leads to a number of negative effects.”

Those effects include “a higher incidence of behavior and mental health problems, impaired cognitive development, poor educational outcomes, impaired social emotional development, an increased aggression and perpetration of violence,” according to the organization.

Robinson, who in his current role as lieutenant governor serves on the State Board of Education, has repeatedly stressed the need for better discipline in schools.

In a radio interview last month , he said that his preferred version of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) would have the acronym stand for “discipline, excellence and intelligence.”

In 2022, he told a legislative committee reviewing school discipline issues that “bad actors should be removed from the classroom and given to the proper authorities whoever that authority might be, whether that be a law enforcement official or a social worker.”

Vague school rules at the root of millions of student suspensions

Public schools nationwide suspend students for ambiguous reasons, prompting hundreds of thousands of missed days for behavior that rarely threatens school safety..

Corrections & Clarifications: This story from The Hechinger Report has been updated to clarify Johanna Lacoe's title. She is the research director of the California Policy Lab's site at the University of California, Berkeley.

A Rhode Island student smashed a ketchup packet with his fist, splattering an administrator. Another ripped up his school work. The district called it “destruction of school property.” A Washington student turned cartwheels while a PE teacher attempted to give instructions. 

A pair of Colorado students slid down a dirt path despite a warning. An Ohio 12th grader refused to work while assigned to the in-school suspension room. Then there was the Maryland sixth grader who swore when his computer shut off and responded “my bad” when his teacher addressed his language. 

Their transgressions all ended the same way: The students were suspended.

Discipline records state the justification for their removals: These students were disorderly. Insubordinate. Disruptive. Disobedient. Defiant. Disrespectful. 

At most U.S. public schools, students can be suspended, even expelled, for these ambiguous and highly subjective reasons. This type of punishment is pervasive nationwide, leading to hundreds of thousands of missed days of school every year, and is often doled out for misbehavior that doesn’t seriously hurt anyone or threaten school safety, a Hechinger Report investigation found. 

Districts cited one of these vague violations as a reason for suspending or expelling students more than 2.8 million times from 2017-18 to 2021-22 across the 20 states that collect this data. That amounted to nearly a third of all punishments recorded by those states. Black students and students with disabilities were more likely than their peers to be disciplined for these reasons. 

Because categories like defiance and disorderly conduct are often defined broadly at the state level, teachers and administrators have wide latitude in interpreting them, according to interviews with dozens of researchers, educators, lawyers and discipline reform advocates. That opens the door to suspensions for low-level infractions.  

“Those are citations you can drive a truck through,” said Jennifer Wood, executive director for the Rhode Island Center for Justice. 

The Hechinger Report also obtained more than 7,000 discipline records from a dozen school districts across eight states through public records requests. They show a wide range of behavior that led to suspensions for things like disruptive conduct and insubordination. Much of the conduct posed little threat to safety. For instance, students were regularly suspended for being tardy, using a phone during class or swearing. 

Teachers need other tools to address behavior

Decades of research have found that students who are suspended from school tend to perform worse academically and drop out at higher rates. Researchers have linked suspensions to lower college enrollment rates and increased involvement with the criminal justice system.

These findings have spurred some policymakers to try to curtail suspensions by limiting their use to severe misbehavior that could harm others. Last year, California banned all suspensions for willful defiance. Other places, including Philadelphia and New York City, have similarly eliminated suspensions for low-level misconduct. 

Elsewhere, though, as student behavior has worsened following the pandemic, legislators are calling for stricter discipline policies, concerned for educators who struggle to maintain order and students whose lessons are  disrupted. These legislative proposals come despite warnings from experts and even classroom teachers who say more suspensions – particularly for minor, subjective offenses – are not the answer. 

Roberto J. Rodríguez, assistant U.S. education secretary, said he was concerned by The Hechinger Report’s findings. “We need more tools in the toolkit for our educators and for our principals to be able to respond to some of the social and emotional needs,” he said. “Suspension and expulsion shouldn’t be the only tool that we pull out when we see behavioral issues.”

In Rhode Island, insubordination was the most common reason for a student to be suspended in the years analyzed. Disorderly conduct was third. 

In the Cranston Public Schools, these two categories accounted for half of the Rhode Island district’s suspensions in 2021-22. Disorderly conduct alone made up about 38%. 

Behavior that led to a such a suspension there in recent years included:

• Getting a haircut in the bathroom;
• Putting a finger through the middle of another student’s hamburger at lunch;
• Writing swear words in an email exchange with another student;
• Throwing cut up pieces of paper in the air;
• Stabbing a juice bottle with a pencil and getting juice all over a table and peers; and
• Leapfrogging over a peer and “almost” knocking down others.

Cranston school officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Rhode Island Department of Education spokesperson Victor Morente said in an email that the agency could not comment on specific causes for suspension, but that the department “continues to underscore that all options need to be exhausted before schools move to suspension.” 

The department defines disorderly conduct as “Any act which substantially disrupts the orderly conduct of a school function, (or) behavior which substantially disrupts the orderly learning environment or poses a threat to the health, safety, and/or welfare of students, staff, or others.”

States let school districts define punishment

Many states use similarly unspecific language in their discipline codes, if they provide any guidance at all, a review of state policies found. 

For education departments that do provide definitions to districts, subjectivity is frequently built in. In Louisiana’s state guidance, for instance, “treats authority with disrespect” includes “any act which demonstrates a disregard or interference with authority.”

Ted Beasley, spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Education, said in an email that discipline codes are not defined in state statutes and that “school discipline is a local school system issue.” 

Officials in several other states said the same.

The result, as demonstrated by a review of discipline records from eight states, is a broad interpretation of the categories: Students were suspended for shoving, yelling at peers, throwing objects, and violating dress codes. Some students were suspended for a single infraction; others broke several rules. 

In fewer than 15% of cases, students got in trouble for using profanity, according to a Hechinger analysis of the records. The rate was similar for when they yelled at or talked back to administrators. In at least 20% of cases, students refused a direct order and in 6%, they were punished for misusing technology, including being on the cell phones during class or using school computers inappropriately. 

“What is defiance to one is not defiance to all, and that becomes confusing, not just for the students, but also the adults,” said Harry Lawson, human and civil rights director for the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union. “Those terms that are littered throughout a lot of codes of conduct, depending on the relationship between people, can mean very different things.”

But giving teachers discretion in how to assign discipline isn’t necessarily a problem, said Adam Tyner, national research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “The whole point of trusting, in this case, teachers, or anyone, to do their job is to be able to let them have responsibility and make some judgment calls,” he said.

Tyner added that it’s important to think about all students when considering school discipline policies. “If a student is disrupting the class, it may not help them all that much to take them and put them in a different environment, but it sure might help the other students who are trying to learn,” he said. 

Johanna Lacoe spent years trying to measure exactly that – the effect of discipline reforms on all students In Philadelphia, including those who hadn’t been previously suspended. The district banned out-of-school suspensions for many nonviolent offenses in 2012. 

Critics of the policy shift warned that it would harm students who do behave in class; they’d learn less or even come to school less often. Lacoe’s research found that schools faithfully following the new rules saw no decrease in academic achievement or attendance for non-suspended students. 

But, the policy wasn’t implemented consistently, the researchers found. The schools that complied already issued the fewest suspensions; it was easier for them to make the policy shift, Lacoe said. In schools that kept suspending students, despite the ban, test scores and student attendance fell slightly.

Overall, though, students who had been previously suspended showed improvements. Lacoe called eliminating out-of-school suspensions for minor infractions a “no brainer.”

“We know suspensions aren’t good for kids,” said Lacoe, the research director of the California Policy Lab's site at the University of California, Berkeley. The group partners with government agencies to research the impact of policies. “Kicking kids out of school and providing them no services and no support and then returning them to the environment where nothing has changed is not a good solution.” 

Students say suspensions are ineffective

This fall, two high schoolers in Providence, Rhode Island, walked out of a classroom. They later learned they were being suspended for their action, because it was considered disrespectful to a teacher. 

“It’s because they don’t like us,” said one of the students, Anaya, whose last name is being withheld to protect her privacy.

In 2021-22, disorderly conduct and insubordination made up a third of all Providence Public School suspensions. 

District spokesperson Jay Wegimont said in an email that the district uses many alternatives to suspension, and out-of-school suspensions are only given to respond to “persistent conduct which substantially impedes the ability of other students to learn.”

But nearly all parents and students interviewed for this series who have dealt with suspension for violations such as disrespect and disorderly conduct also said that the punishment often did nothing but leave the student frustrated with the school and damage the student’s relationships with teachers. 

From a suspended student to an advocate for others

At a Cincinnati high school in 2019, Yousuf Munir led a peaceful protest about the impact of climate change, with about 50 fellow students. Munir, then a junior, planned to leave school and join a larger protest at City Hall. The principal said Munir couldn’t go and threatened to assign detention.

Munir left anyway.

That detention morphed into suspension for disobeying the principal, said Munir, who remembers thinking: “The only thing you’re doing is literally keeping me out of class.”

The district told The Hechinger Report that Munir was suspended for leaving campus without written permission, a decision in line with the district’s code of conduct. 

The whole incident left Munir feeling “so angry I didn’t know what to do with it.” They went on to start the Young Activists Coalition, which advocated for fair discipline and restorative practices at Cincinnati Public Schools.

Now in college, Munir is a mentor to high school kids. “I can’t imagine ever treating a kid that way,” they said. 

Searching for consequences beyond suspension 

Parents and students around the country described underlying reasons for behavior problems that a suspension would do little to address: Struggles with anxiety. Frustration with not understanding classwork. Distraction by events in their personal lives. 

Discipline records are also dotted with examples that indicate a deeper cause for the misbehavior.

In one case, a student in Rhode Island was suspended for talking back to her teachers; the discipline record notes that her mother had recently died and the student might need counseling. A student in Minnesota “lost his cool” after having “his buttons pushed by a couple peers.” He cursed and argued back. A Maryland student who went to the main office to report being harassed cursed at administrators when asked to formally document it. 

To be sure, discipline records disclose only part of a school’s response, and many places may simultaneously be working to address root causes. Even as they retain – and exercise – the right to suspend, many districts across the country have adopted alternative strategies aimed at building relationships and repairing harm caused by misconduct. 

“There needs to be some kind of consequence for acting out, but 9 out of 10 times, it doesn’t need to be suspension,” said Judy Brown, a social worker in Minneapolis Public Schools.

Some educators who have embraced alternatives say in the long run they’re more effective. Suspension temporarily removes kids; it rarely changes behavior when they return. 

“It’s really about having the compassion and the time and patience to be able to have these conversations with students to see what the antecedent of the behavior is,” Brown said. “It’s often not personal; they’re overwhelmed.” 

In some cases, students act out because they don’t want to be at school at all and know the quickest escape is misbehavior. 

On Valentine's day 2022, a Maryland seventh grader showed up to school late. She then refused to go to class or leave the hallway and, according to her Dorchester County discipline record, was disrespectful towards an educator. "These are the behaviors (the student) typically displays when she does not want to go to class," her record reads. 

By 8:30 she was suspended and sent home for three days.

Dorchester County school officials declined to comment. In 2021-22, 38% of suspensions and expulsions in the district were assigned for disrespect and disruption.

This district took a hard look at its discipline practices

Last year, administrators in Minnesota’s Monticello School District spent the summer overhauling their discipline procedures and consequences, out of concern that students of color were being disproportionately disciplined. They developed clearer definitions for violation categories and instituted non-exclusionary tools to deal with isolated minor misbehaviors.

Previously, the district suspended students for telling an “inappropriate joke” in class or cursing, records show. Those types of behavior will now be dealt with in schools, Superintendent Eric Olsen said, but repeated refusals and noncompliance could still lead to a suspension.

“Would I ever want to see a school where we can’t suspend? I would not,” he said. “Life is always about balance.”

Olsen wants his students – all students – to feel valued and be successful. But they’re not his only consideration. “You also have to think of your employees,” he said. “There’s also that fine line of making sure your staff feels safe.” 

Monticello, like most school districts across the country, has seen an increase in student misconduct since schools reopened after pandemic closures. A 2023 survey found that more than 40% of educators felt less safe in their schools compared with 2019 and, in some instances, teachers have been injured in violent incidents, including shootings . 

And even before 2020, educators nationwide were warning that they lacked the appropriate mental health and social service supports to adequately deal with behavior challenges. Some nonviolent problems, like refusal to put phones away or stay in one’s seat, can make it difficult for teachers to effectively do their jobs. 

And the discipline records reviewed by The Hechinger Report do capture a sampling of more severe misbehavior. In some cases, students were labeled defiant or disorderly for fighting, throwing chairs or even hitting a teacher. 

Shatara Clark taught for 10 years in Alabama before feeling too disrespected and overextended to keep going. She recalled regular disobedience from students. 

“Sometimes I look back like, ‘How did I make it?’” Clark said. “My blood pressure got high and everything.” 

She became so familiar with the protocol for discipline referrals that she can still remember every step two years after leaving the classroom. In her schools, students were suspended for major incidents like fighting or threatening a teacher but also for repeated nonviolent behavior like interrupting or speaking out in class. 

Clark said discipline records often don’t show the full context. “Say for instance, a boy got suspended for talking out of turn. Well, you're not going to know that he's done that five times, and I've called his parents,” she said. “Then you see someone that's been suspended for fighting, and it looks like the same punishment for a lesser thing.”

In many states, reform advocates and student activists pushing to ban harsh discipline policies have found a receptive audience in lawmakers. Many teachers are also sympathetic to their arguments; the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers support discipline reform and alternatives to suspension. 

In some instances, though, teachers have resisted efforts to curtail suspensions, saying they need to have the option to remove kids from school.

Many experts say the largest hurdle to getting teachers to embrace discipline reforms is that new policies are often rolled out without training or adequate staffing and support. 

Without those things, “the policy change is somewhat of a paper tiger,” said Richard Welsh, an associate professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University. “If we don’t think about the accompanying support, it’s almost as if some of these are unfunded mandates.”  

In Monticello, Olsen has focused on professional development for teachers to promote alternatives to suspension. The district has created space for students to talk about their actions and how they can rebuild relationships. 

It’s still a work in progress. Teacher training, Olsen says, is key. 

“You can’t just do a policy change and expect everyone to magically do it.”

CONTRIBUTING: Hadley Hitson of the Montgomery Advertiser and Madeline Mitchell of the Cincinnati Enquirer, members of the USA TODAY Network; and Amanda Chen, Tazbia Fatima, Sara Hutchinson, Tara García Mathewson, and Nirvi Shah, The Hechinger Report. 

Note: The Hechinger Report's Fazil Khan had nearly completed the data analysis and reporting for this project when he died in a fire in his apartment building. USA TODAY Senior Data Editor Doug Caruso completed data visualizations for this project based on Khan’s work.

This story about classroom discipline was produced by USA TODAY publishing partner The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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Jessica Grose

Get tech out of the classroom before it’s too late.

By Jessica Grose

Opinion Writer

Jaime Lewis noticed that her eighth-grade son’s grades were slipping several months ago. She suspected it was because he was watching YouTube during class on his school-issued laptop, and her suspicions were validated. “I heard this from two of his teachers and confirmed with my son: Yes, he watches YouTube during class, and no, he doesn’t think he can stop. In fact, he opted out of retaking a math test he’d failed, just so he could watch YouTube,” she said.

She decided to do something about it. Lewis told me that she got together with other parents who were concerned about the unfettered use of school-sanctioned technology in San Luis Coastal Unified School District, their district in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Because they knew that it wasn’t realistic to ask for the removal of the laptops entirely, they went for what they saw as an achievable win: blocking YouTube from students’ devices. A few weeks ago, they had a meeting with the district superintendent and several other administrators, including the tech director.

To bolster their case, Lewis and her allies put together a video compilation of clips that elementary and middle school children had gotten past the district’s content filters.

Their video opens on images of nooses being fitted around the necks of the terrified women in the TV adaptation of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” It ends with the notoriously violent “Singin’ in the Rain” sequence from “A Clockwork Orange.” (Several versions of this scene are available on YouTube. The one she pointed me to included “rape scene” in the title.) Their video was part of a PowerPoint presentation filled with statements from other parents and school staff members, including one from a middle school assistant principal, who said, “I don’t know how often teachers are using YouTube in their curriculum.”

That acknowledgment gets to the heart of the problem with screens in schools. I heard from many parents who said that even when they asked district leaders how much time kids were spending on their screens, they couldn’t get straight answers; no one seemed to know, and no one seemed to be keeping track.

Eric Prater, the superintendent of the San Luis Coastal Unified School District, told me that he didn’t realize how much was getting through the schools’ content filters until Lewis and her fellow parents raised concerns. “Our tech department, as I found out from the meeting, spends quite a lot of time blocking certain websites,” he said. “It’s a quite time-consuming situation that I personally was not aware of.” He added that he’s grateful this was brought to his attention.

I don’t think educators are the bad guys here. Neither does Lewis. In general, educators want the best for students. The bad guys, as I see it, are tech companies.

One way or another, we’ve allowed Big Tech’s tentacles into absolutely every aspect of our children’s education, with very little oversight and no real proof that their devices or programs improve educational outcomes. Last year Collin Binkley at The Associated Press analyzed public records and found that “many of the largest school systems spent tens of millions of dollars in pandemic money on software and services from tech companies, including licenses for apps, games and tutoring websites.” However, he continued, schools “have little or no evidence the programs helped students.”

It’s not just waste, very likely, of taxpayer money that’s at issue. After reading many of the over 900 responses from parents and educators to my questionnaire about tech in schools and from the many conversations I had over the past few weeks with readers, I’m convinced that the downsides of tech in schools far outweigh the benefits.

Though tech’s incursion into America’s public schools — particularly our overreliance on devices — hyperaccelerated in 2020, it started well before the Covid-19 pandemic. Google, which provides the operating system for lower-cost Chromebooks and is owned by the same parent company as YouTube, is a big player in the school laptop space, though I also heard from many parents and teachers whose schools supply students with other types and brands of devices.

As my newsroom colleague Natasha Singer reported in 2017 (by which point “half the nation’s primary- and secondary-school students” were, according to Google, using its education apps), “Google makes $30 per device by selling management services for the millions of Chromebooks that ship to schools. But by habituating students to its offerings at a young age, Google obtains something much more valuable”: potential lifetime customers.

The issue goes beyond access to age-inappropriate clips or general distraction during school hours. Several parents related stories of even kindergartners reading almost exclusively on iPads because their school districts had phased out hard-copy books and writing materials after shifting to digital-only curriculums. There’s evidence that this is harmful: A 2019 analysis of the literature concluded that “readers may be more efficient and aware of their performance when reading from paper compared to screens.”

“It seems to be a constant battle between fighting for the students’ active attention (because their brains are now hard-wired for the instant gratification of TikTok and YouTube videos) and making sure they aren’t going to sites outside of the dozens they should be,” Nicole Post, who teaches at a public elementary school in Missouri, wrote to me. “It took months for students to listen to me tell a story or engage in a read-aloud. I’m distressed at the level of technology we’ve socialized them to believe is normal. I would give anything for a math or social studies textbook.”

I’ve heard about kids disregarding teachers who tried to limit tech use, fine motor skills atrophying because students rarely used pencils and children whose learning was ultimately stymied by the tech that initially helped them — for example, students learning English as a second language becoming too reliant on translation apps rather than becoming fluent.

Some teachers said they have programs that block certain sites and games, but those programs can be cumbersome. Some said they have software, like GoGuardian, that allows them to see the screens of all the students in their classes at once. But classroom time is zero sum: Teachers are either teaching or acting like prison wardens; they can’t do both at the same time.

Resources are finite. Software costs money . Replacing defunct or outdated laptops costs money . When it comes to I.T., many schools are understaffed . More of the money being spent on tech and the maintenance and training around the use of that tech could be spent on other things, like actual books. And badly monitored and used tech has the most potential for harm.

I’ve considered the counterarguments: Kids who’d be distracted by tech would find something else to distract them; K-12 students need to gain familiarity with tech to instill some vague work force readiness.

But on the first point, I think other forms of distraction — like talking to friends, doodling and daydreaming — are better than playing video games or watching YouTube because they at least involve children engaging with other children or their own minds. And there’s research that suggests laptops are uniquely distracting . One 2013 study found that even being next to a student who is multitasking on a computer can hurt a student’s test scores.

On the second point, you can have designated classes to teach children how to keyboard, code or use software that don’t require them to have laptops in their hands throughout the school day. And considering that various tech companies are developing artificial intelligence that, we’re meant to understand, will upend work as we know it , whatever tech skills we’re currently teaching will probably be obsolete by the time students enter the work force anyway. By then, it’ll be too late to claw back the brain space of our nation’s children that we’ve already ceded. And for what? So today’s grade schoolers can be really, really good at making PowerPoint presentations like the ones they might one day make as white-collar adults?

That’s the part that I can’t shake: We’ve let tech companies and their products set the terms of the argument about what education should be, and too many people, myself included, didn’t initially realize it. Companies never had to prove that devices or software, broadly speaking, helped students learn before those devices had wormed their way into America’s public schools. And now the onus is on parents to marshal arguments about the detriments of tech in schools.

Holly Coleman, a parent of two who lives in Kansas and is a substitute teacher in her district, describes what students are losing:

They can type quickly but struggle to write legibly. They can find info about any topic on the internet but can’t discuss that topic using recall, creativity or critical thinking. They can make a beautiful PowerPoint or Keynote in 20 minutes but can’t write a three-page paper or hand-make a poster board. Their textbooks are all online, which is great for the seams on their backpack, but tangible pages under your fingers literally connect you to the material you’re reading and learning. These kids do not know how to move through their day without a device in their hand and under their fingertips. They never even get the chance to disconnect from their tech and reconnect with one another through eye contact and conversation.

Jonathan Haidt’s new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” prescribes phone-free schools as a way to remedy some of the challenges facing America’s children. I agree that there’s no place for smartphones on a K-12 campus. But if you take away the phones and the kids still have near-constant internet connectivity on devices they have with them in every class, the problem won’t go away.

When Covid hit and screens became the only way for millions of kids to “attend” school, not having a personal device became an equity issue. But we’re getting to a point where the opposite may be true. According to the responses to my questionnaire, during the remote-school era, private schools seemed to rely far less on screens than public schools, and many educators said that they deliberately chose lower-tech school environments for their own children — much the same way that some tech workers intentionally send their kids to screen-free schools.

We need to reframe the entire conversation around tech in schools because it’s far from clear that we’re getting the results we want as a society and because parents are in a defensive crouch, afraid to appear anti-progress or unwilling to prepare the next generation for the future. “I feel like a baby boomer attacking like this,” said Lewis.

But the drawbacks of constant screen time in schools go beyond data privacy, job security and whether a specific app increases math performance by a standard deviation. As Lewis put it, using tech in the classroom makes students “so passive, and it requires so little agency and initiative.” She added, “I’m very concerned about the species’ ability to survive and the ability to think critically and the importance of critical thinking outside of getting a job.”

If we don’t hit pause now and try to roll back some of the excesses, we’ll be doing our children — and society — a profound disservice.

The good news is that sometimes when the stakes become clear, educators respond: In May, Dr. Prater said, “we’re going to remove access to YouTube from our district devices for students.” He added that teachers will still be able to get access to YouTube if they want to show instructional videos. The district is also rethinking its phone policy to cut down on personal device use in the classroom. “For me,” he said, “it’s all about how do you find the common-sense approach, going forward, and match that up with good old-fashioned hands-on learning?” He knows technology can cause “a great deal of harm if we’re not careful.”

Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.

In the Oxford school shooting: historic punishment, familiar sadness

The shootings happen so frequently that the only way to distinguish one from the other is with a heartbreaking shorthand that’s both callous and intimate. The rampages have become known by their geography, first by the cities and suburbs where they occurred — Aurora, Las Vegas, Buffalo, Parkland. And then by the way in which the quotidian — a movie, a live concert, a grocery store, a school — became killing fields. But the shooting at a high school in Oxford, Mich., in which four students died carried the specific tensions and sorrows that have us yelling at each other across self-imposed divides about school safety, gun ownership and the authority of parents.

What is the appropriate power dynamic between parents and teachers? Can a 1950s version of gun culture realistically exist in this 21st-century society? Can communities barricade and surveil schools to safety? Oxford overflowed with the lies the culture tells itself.

Do you recall the Oxford shooting in November 2021? It’s written on the soul of those who lived through it, but for others it may have been overtaken by the urgencies of a presidential election, the rising death toll in Gaza or some singularly personal calamity that requires full attention. But more likely, Oxford sadly, horrifically, simply faded away.

So many of the details of the tragedy were familiar: a young man got hold of a gun and left a path of devastation and terror in the hallways and classrooms of an American school. The shooter, Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time of the killings, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Then, in an Oakland County courtroom, his parents were tried for their part in the mayhem.

Jennifer and James Crumbley had separate trials for involuntary manslaughter. First, the mother. Then, the father. The juries found them both guilty, the first time parents were convicted of deaths in a mass shooting committed by their child. On Tuesday, a judge sentenced each of them to 10 to 15 years in prison. She noted that the convictions were “not about poor parenting. These convictions confirm repeated acts — or lack of acts — that could have halted an oncoming runaway train, repeatedly ignoring things that would make a reasonable person feel the hair on the back of her neck stand up.”

Their punishment was a far cry from what their attorneys requested. James’s attorney argued that he be sentenced to time served — and the clock has been ticking since the couple was arrested in December 2021 when police officers found the husband and wife camped out in a warehouse on the east side of Detroit, some 40 miles south of Oxford. Jennifer’s attorney suggested that her client be sentenced to house arrest — in her attorney’s guesthouse.

The Crumbleys’ was an unusual prosecution. The closest comparison might be the recent case of Deja Taylor. In Virginia in 2023, Taylor’s 6-year-old son gained access to her gun and shot his first grade teacher. Taylor was punished as a result of his actions, but her crimes were child neglect , possessing a firearm while being a drug user and lying on a background check. In contrast, the Crumbleys have been found complicit in the Oxford killings. They enabled them. They not only failed their child and their family; they failed society. They helped to clear a path that led to the killings and their countless ripples of trauma.

It was quite something to see the mother face a jury . She didn’t look like the same person who had been arrested. She moved like a woman carrying not just additional physical weight, but also the outrage and despair of a community. There were moments when a courtroom observer might have been tempted to decry her prosecution as another way in which mothers still are expected to bear the bulk of the responsibility for parenting. The prosecution depicted her as a woman more consumed with her work and her horses and her extramarital affairs than her child. But then she took the witness stand and said, “I’ve asked myself if I would have done anything differently, and I wouldn’t have.” She demonstrated an inability to see her own failings upon closer inspection. And her failing was that she saw the son that she wanted to see, that it was easier to see, rather than the deeply troubled one who stood before her asking for help.

James was the parent who purchased the gun that was his son’s tool for devastation. He bought it and tucked it away in an armoire and slipped the bullets under a pair of jeans and that was his safety plan at a time when 327 people a day are shot in the United States. It was his right to bear arms in a part of the country that loves hunting and target-shooting, but not to do so carelessly. James never took the stand, but his jailhouse phone calls were filled with anger and threats toward the prosecutors. When he finally addressed the victims’ family members during Tuesday’s sentencing, he said, “I’m sorry for your loss as a result of what my son did.”

During the trial, an educator testified to locking eyes with the killer as he pointed a gun at her. She managed to dodge the bullet that was aimed at her heart but instead hit her shoulder. A police officer grew emotional as he explained how he’d watched hours and hours of video that tracked the killer as he moved through the school and the bodies fell. Through their testimony, listeners learned that this school had more than 100 cameras positioned throughout it. Classroom doors had special bolts that extended into the floor so that entrances could not be breached. It was a fortified school, a place where seemingly every corner was under surveillance, but it was not immune to the killings. The hardened school was no match for a single desperate student with a gun.

The killer had described his mental distress. He shared this information with a friend and in his journal and with his parents. The teachers deferred to the parents despite concerns that their son needed immediate counseling — not because teachers foresaw the deaths of his schoolmates but because they feared for his own safety. And what did the parents do with all their authority? These are the days in which parental rights demand that children be excused from learning about sex or gender issues or racism. Parents demand to be told about their child’s every mishap and desire shared with a teacher or counselor but don’t want to hear that their child is struggling.

“He was not the son I knew when I woke up on Nov. 30,” Jennifer said to the victims’ families during sentencing. “I know we did our best.”

Then as she sat at the defense table in her prison stripes, she added: “This could be any parent up here in my shoes.”

Indeed, it could be any parent who ignores signs that their child is struggling emotionally, purchases them a gun, fails to secure the gun and insists that they could not possibly foresee a tragedy.

Parents imagine the possibility that all sorts of things could befall their child. They envision stranger danger on the playground. They worry about government overreach into their relationship with their child. They fret about their child being uncomfortable in school or socially ostracized or being diagnosed with a deadly ailment. And they’re terrified of lockdowns and shootings and having to meet in a family unification zone to be told that their worst fear has come true.

Before the judge announced the Crumbleys’ sentence, the victims’ family members talked about their loss. Their stories were filled with unfathomable sadness. Indeed, the truest thing that Jennifer’s attorney might have said was that there was more than “enough sadness to go around.” Holding the Crumbleys accountable will do nothing to dissipate the sadness of today, but perhaps it will help to limit the sorrows of the future.

School board association leader concerned about legislature possibly taking up school discipline issue in special session

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Executive Director of the West Virginia School Board Association Jim Brown is concerned about the elementary school student discipline bill, which could resurface in a special session with state lawmakers late next month.

SB 614 , which was sponsored by Senate Education Committee Chair Amy Grady, made it out of the state Senate in this year’s regular session but couldn’t get over the finish line with delegates in the House.

Brown, who said he doesn’t normally speak at board meetings, made an exception during a state Board of Education meeting  last week. He has his concerns with the bill.

“The urgency of a current issue led me to express my concerns,” Brown told the board.

Gov. Jim Justice is planning on calling lawmakers into special session to deal with a number of issues. Justice said this past week that the special session will likely be in late May. Senate President Craig Blair has been speaking with Justice about getting the school discipline bill on the agenda.

“I’m working on attempting to get it on the call for the special session,” Blair told West Virginia Watch earlier this month . “We’re wanting education to be better across the board. I’m a huge advocate for this.”

The student discipline bill would give elementary school teachers more authority when dealing with disruptive students in their classroom. Grady’s bill would give teachers the ability to determine if a student’s behavior is too violent, threatening or intimidating or creates an unsafe learning environment in the classroom.

A teacher would determine if the student should be removed from the classroom and placed in a behavioral intervention program provided by the county. If a county doesn’t have access to such a program, the parents of the student would be notified of the situation, the student would be prohibited from riding the bus and, if the student is not picked up by the end of the day, school representatives may notify law enforcement.

Students would then not be permitted to return to school until they complete a risk assessment. The estimated return time for a student going back to school would be 1-3 days. Brown said the turnaround time for a student who’s out of the classroom, issued a risk assessment and trying to return to school takes longer than anticipated.

“From experience, it’s not days but in many cases weeks,” said Brown, a former school teacher and superintendent.

Once a risk assessment is complete, a student would return to school in a provisional basis for 5-10 days. However, Brown said there are not enough mental health services to accommodate a student with behavioral issues.

“If another incident occurs within that time frame, the student is then places in an alternative learning environment for the rest of the semester or school year,” Brown said. “These students would likely be placed on homebound services due to a lack of alternative learning environments and their behavior will go unaddressed.”

Brown said the bill doesn’t take the right approach when dealing with a student’s disruptive behavior. He believes there are underlying issues that are not getting enough attention.

“We must further gather data on the prevalence rate of mental health issues among our youth and address the severity of their crisis,” he said.

Brown is calling for the establishment of a statewide task force made up of community leaders, educators, mental health professionals, parents and policy makers to tackle mental health challenges present for some students and staff of West Virginia schools.

WVEA President Dale Lee had previously said the bill was not perfect but did contain some good first steps.

“We need to address the violent student. I have no problem with that. There has to be an avenue the teacher can feel safe in the classroom,” he said.

A survey conducted by the WVEA showed that 62% of more than 700 teachers said they are experiencing higher levels of burnout. 35% said they are not at all confident they will continue working in an education career.

Lee agrees with Brown that more needs to be done in the state’s education system when it comes to mental health.

“Let’s really address the mental and emotional well-being of these students and provide a place that we can work on their academics and their behavior,” he said.

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