Things We Mean to Teach and Some We Don't

One of the questions we responded to during our consideration of Behavioral Theory was how punishment may be "archaic," that is, outdated and unnecessary in education. Of course, a clearer understanding of what "punishment" is, exactly, matters greatly here, as punishment has a wide range of extremes. The fact of the matter is that negative attention or consequences are a fact of life in the real world. You speed, for example, you ought not be surprised to get pulled over and issued a speeding summons. If we are to posit, as I do, that education is to prepare students for life in the real world, then not including punishment in some way might be leaving students somewhat unprepared for the real world. In a perfect world, all students would learn and be attentive and work to their ability all the time, everyday of the school year. Alas, our world isn't perfect. So I keep the options of punishment available.
With that said, I haven't written a referral or sent a student out of my classroom in years (literally), and one student I did send out of my class in my second year of teaching for chewing gum (and defying me) ending up getting arrested some thirty minutes later (literally -- it's one of my principal's favorite stories to tell). I teach middle schoolers, and I have discovered that if you are honest with them -- tell them what they have to do and why they should do it and so on -- most often most of them "buy in." I happen to think that there are few "bad kids," just kids behaving badly, often times because they find themselves in bad situations beyond their control. There, the teacher can play a pivotal guiding role to help steer these kids away from poor choices and bad decisions. In my first year of teaching, I taught an entire class of retained 7th graders and another of retained 8th graders. I say with some sincerity that I learned more from them than they did from me, though, truth be told, I also like to think that I helped to put them on a better path in life.
Last year I was teaching a book called Speak, in which a young teen girl is raped at a summer party. One of the issues of the book deals with "Learned Helplessness," a concept in which one learns not to do anything when, in fact, one can. The girl fails to speak up and get help. Why she doesn't seems puzzling? The answer is Learned Helplessness. This concept helps to explain the behavior of prisoners in concentration camps during the Holocaust. In any case, I have included an interesting link to show just how powerful and subtly influential Learned Helplessness can be. If students can be influenced so easily so quickly, it makes me pause to reflect on all that I may be teaching my students entirely unaware. Something to think about.