A recent news item says that two secondary schools in Hartford, Connecticut are punishing students for swearing at teachers. Students whose lack of respect is so overpowering that it bursts forth in swearing as they defy teachers and administrators are being fined $103.00. If the student cannot pay the fine, the parents are required to pay.
The punishment is working beautifully. The effort to bring order back to the schools is paying off rapidly (pun not intended), and many are pleased.
Hartford Police Officer Roger Pearl said, “Before, the kids were swearing all the time. It went from many incidents to almost nothing. It’s quiet in the halls.” That sounds good to me.
A seventeen-year old girl who had to pay the fine said it definitely would stop her from swearing at teachers in the future. That sounds great, too.
Sitting on the other side of the fence, though, is George Sugai, who teaches school discipline at University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education. That is, he teaches teachers how to discipline. Sugai is unconvinced that the effort will work, and says, “Research says that punishing kids doesn’t teach them the right way to act.”
I disagree with Mr., Sugai. That belief, popular for many decades now, has resulted in prisons bursting at the seams. Because we don’t punish children to teach them the right way to act, we have to punish them later for something far more serious. Today’s lack of respect for a teacher becomes tomorrow’s lack of respect for the law. Actually, it’s a natural progression. Teachers and administrators are the authority in the school. If children go unpunished for gross disrespect toward them, they expect to go unpunished for disrespect for all authority in society.
I’m not sure to what research Mr. Sugai refers, but I can assure you from many years of experience as a teacher and principal, that the research is greatly flawed. Children must learn, as I tell teachers in my free, online course, Character Education 101, to submit to authority. One of the best ways to teach such submission, I believe, is to make the punishment for wrong-doing strong enough that children will not want to repeat the behavior that earned that punishment.
In the case cited, teenagers had taken their lack of respect to the limit. They were daring teachers, administrators, and police officers to make them stop. They were in command, very clearly. They were calling the shots. Apparently, other attempts to control the swearing had been too small. Whatever happened to swearing students had been mild enough that they didn’t mind repeating the punishment. When a large price tag was hung on their lack of respect, however, it finally became worth the effort to stop swearing!
Actually, those who believe that punishing kids doesn’t teach them the right way to act would be consistent only if they believe punishing criminals also is futile.
I beg to differ. The only way we can make any rule or law effective is to hang a large price tag on it, and demand payment when that rule or law is broken.
That’s the view from my chair. What’s your view?