Fear and Punishment

Some thoughts on why it's harmful in classrooms (and beyond)

When I decided to become a teacher many years ago, I did so because (among other reasons) I wanted to co-create a community with young people, a microcosm of “real” life, where we were able to design and practice ways of living and learning with each other each and every day. Little did I know then that conventional school was not the ideal place to attempt this endeavor, as we were all still within a structure devoid of general autonomy and consent - but we did what we could. We collaborated to build a vibrant community within our four walls where we took time getting to know each other, experiencing joy while learning together, and working through times of conflict and harm.

Many schools respond reactively to challenging situations. If there is harm, the result is punishment. Students are sent out of the classroom, to the principal’s office, have recess privileges revoked, or are given detentions or suspensions. Whatever the specific transgression, the person causing harm is removed from the community and punished by having to sit in a room by themselves or be reprimanded (and further punished) by an administrator. Punishments never made sense to me. When I heard of classrooms or schools using punishment, I always had a lot of questions: What kinds of proactive structures were in place in the school/classroom that could have prevented this transgression? What will happen to the child after the punishment? How are trust and connection restored? How is the child who did harm reintegrated back into the community? How will the circumstances or the environment change so that the same transgression doesn’t happen again?

When I was a teacher, my students and I created our classroom community together. From what was displayed on our walls, to the jobs we created, to the ways we figured out how to handle conflict - it was not just me dictating how things were going to happen; we collaborated to create our environment (again, within the confines of the conventional system). In our classroom, we were intentionally proactive. We began the year by co-creating our rules, then revisited and revised those rules throughout the year. We had daily rituals that built community - ways that we came together and deepened our relationships. We knew each other (and yes, I am aware that it was still only a fraction of our whole selves, because, well, school) and had fun - so much fun - together. In our classroom we had internal systems of care in place, even between some neighboring classrooms, where students knew they had not only their own teacher and classmates looking out for them, but other teachers and classmates as well. Let me be clear: other teachers and classmates looking out for them, with an eye on care, not punishment. 

When you operate in this way, you have to have a belief that people want to belong, they want to be known, they want to be cared for, they want to ‘do right’ by the community. When students are involved in the creation of the classroom (or any) environment, they are more strongly invested and willing to practice accountability. Mistakes and transgressions (or ‘misbehaviors’ as they are so commonly called) are a normal part of being human. There is no world where people do not cause harm. When you shift your mindset, you begin to see harm for what it is: a call for help and an opportunity to make changes to the situation or environment by looking at the cause of the transgression. Punishment is a quick fix that looks like it has solved the problem because it stops the negative behavior in the moment, but it does not maintain the integrity of the individuals involved nor does it get to the root cause of why the problem occurred in the first place. Nothing changes about the environment or structure when punishment is used. The result of punishment is an ‘othering’ of the person who did the harm and an instillment of fear in other students in the classroom who are now afraid of being punished themselves. How does detention truly help if a student is just sitting alone, away from the community? What does missing recess accomplish except depriving a student of the movement and fresh air that they deserve? I think a question we should always be asking when dealing with the aftermath of harm is, What will we do to transform (the situation, the environment, the community)?

When I was teaching, many colleagues questioned why I didn’t use punishment. They called me naive to use approaches other than ones based in fear. They couldn’t imagine how students would “fall in line” without threats or punitive measures. The truth is, my students didn’t fall in line. They (and I) operated as humans, making mistakes and causing harm - but I believe it was how we recovered from times of conflict that made our community what it was. I was constantly  astounded by just how many times, during my tenure as a teacher, I was told how ‘this’ way of teaching was not going to achieve the ‘results’ the school wanted, namely compliance and obedience. But what schools came to understand was that I had no interest in teaching young people to obey; I wanted them to be their full selves. 

My attempt to build a thriving ecosystem of care, compassion, and joy within a conventional, hostile setting (meaning the majority of the staff is dead-set on punishments) was extremely challenging because students were not only in my care throughout the day, they also interacted with other teachers, lunch aides, playground monitors, and office staff. There were times that I retrieved my students after physical education or lunch only to hear that their actions resulted in a lost recess or detention. When this would happen, my whole body would recoil: This is not how we operate in our community. But these adults had the capacity, with the backing of administration, to hand out punishments as they saw fit and many wielded their power without any thought of the repercussions. When students would return to our classroom from spaces where there was yelling and punishment, we would come together and try to make sense of it as a community. They knew that I was not on the side of other adults who reacted in this way. I came to understand that, many times, my students didn’t understand the expectations of other teachers/staff, and were confused as to why they were in trouble in the first place. These young people understood that it was possible to cause harm and not be punished; in our classroom, we were well-practiced in going through a process of repair. When young people see what it is like to be treated with humanity and connection it becomes (even more) infuriating for them to be treated otherwise.

I taught for almost 15 years and, let me tell you, it is wholly possible to not use punishment when dealing with harm, but it’s a lot of work, and those who attempt it will make a lot of mistakes (speaking from experience here). To shift from a punitive mindset to a transformative one is challenging, especially if you have existed in conventional systems for the majority of your life. To not just resort to, “I’m going to send you to the principal”, “You are going to lose your recess,” or any other myriad punishments when faced with a challenging situation necessitates a paradigm shift within the adult. It also takes building a strong foundation of care within your community as well as alternative structures in order to not have to rely on punitive and hierarchical interventions. 

When a school environment does not value social and emotional learning, everyone suffers. Students don’t know what to expect from the many different adults they see on a daily basis. Teachers are constantly reacting to their students instead of working collaboratively with them. Everyone (including the adults) lives in fear of being reprimanded and punished. Schools must center the social and emotional components of living and learning, and I’m not talking about performative action I’ve seen at schools -- “friendship” assemblies, anti-bullying posters on the wall, and everyone reading How Full is Your Bucket. I’m talking about the daily work of getting to know each other, building trust and connection, and figuring out how to transform the community when harm occurs. Living in this way within school walls can be challenging because it goes against the grain of how school works. School is a place where students are on the lowest rung of the hierarchy, and are at the mercy of the adults ‘in charge’. Teachers see themselves somewhere on the middle section of the hierarchy, fearful of ‘messing up’ and ‘not maintaining order’ in the presence of administrators. This top-down way of governing has everyone walking on eggshells.

I believe there is a desensitization that happens to us when we spend much of our lives in a place where punishment is normalized. During the years we are at school, we see ourselves and our classmates reprimanded, losing free time, and being issued detentions and suspensions on a regular basis. Our society thinks it is acceptable for elementary students to lose playtime for talking in class and for teenagers to be suspended or expelled for what they wear. Watch any television show or read any book and you will see school punishments made to seem routine, a ‘regular’ part of a young person’s existence - kids being humiliated in front of their peers, teachers yelling, classes with their heads on their desks. We’ve normalized punishment to the point that much of society believes this is the only way to operate. I wonder if seeing all of this for the 12+ years we are in school makes us balk at the idea of imagining life without continual punishment and fear. School reinforces the belief that hierarchical systems of oppression are necessary and that trying to build something different is naive. 

Our young people deserve to be treated with kindness, thoughtfulness, and compassion. They deserve not to have their names written on a board, humiliated in front of their peers, or to be excluded from their community. I wonder if we all started questioning the way classrooms and schools operate, if we might carry those questions to the world outside of school. Maybe we would start to wonder whether punitive ways of dealing with harm, namely police and prisons, are actually helping our society. Questioning things doesn’t mean you have to have immediate solutions. I think that if we all started asking more questions, we’d start to collectively figure out that there is not a lot of sense in continuing to exist in a framework dependent on systems of power and punitive measures. 

There is a world beyond punishment and fear.