Discipline and Punishment

The words "discipline" and "punishment" often calls for negative behaviour and mischief that occurs in a classroom. Ever since taking this class and working at a daycare however, my views upon these two words changed. When I was young, I use to think that discipline and punishment was only limited to times when I was punished or disciplined for eliciting wrong behaviour at home or having received warnings from school. Now however, my perspective broadens to include those who I might or might not have a direct relationship with.

As I mentioned in the previous blog entry, Lorna puts forth the idea for us to view the situation clearly and "punish the behaviour, not the child". This sounds quite easy to do but in reality, it is not. I can visualize in my head that being a teacher in charge of 20+ children and having to manage good and bad behaviour while giving lessons sounds like a big challenge. As teachers, we must always remember to make sure the punishment equates to the behaviour that is shown by the child. If our ways of discipline does not balance out with the behaviour, children would probably feel a sense of "learned helplessness" in which could lead to either lower self-esteem and self-confidence and or the choosing to misbehave anyway (because no matter what they did, the punishment would be harsh). While patience is key, ethics also come into the equation when a child is not choosing to cooperate.

When I speak of ethics, I must refer back to a story I heard over the news awhile back. There was an incident at a school in which a teacher, as a punishing/disciplining exercise for her class and their inattentiveness to the lesson, made her whole class clean the washroom with gloves and scrubs (forgive me but I don't quite remember the details). Although I don't know what happened to that teacher after this incident was revealed to the general public, I'm quite certain that the school board would've had something to say about her choice of punishment. Seeing this situation, it is obvious that the teacher judged incorrectly about her choice of punishment because it conflicted with, I'm sure, everyone's moral ethics.

Working at a daycare also opened my eyes to how discipline and punishment differs in a daycare environment as compared to a school or home environment. At daycare, it is a general consensus that the children just got out from 6 hours of a long school day and it is our job, as their daycare/fun provider, to let them have their way for the rest of the day until their parents pick them up. Although sometimes, we must discipline children for their aggressive or inappropriate behaviour, it is important for us to be as lenient as possible and only discipline the children when there is a safety concern involved.