Different forms of behavior enforcement such as corporal punishment and suspension have been used in most Jamaican schools for ages. Regardless of the social and humanitarian pressures to ban severe forms of punishment on students, many teachers still uphold harsh punishments as ideal for behavior enforcement. Many teachers support harsh punishments on students on the grounds that negative behaviors should be countered by instilling pain to discourage replication. However, harsh punishments have been proven to cause long-term physical, psychological, and emotional effects on the children that encourage worse behaviors and underperformance. Instead of harsh punishments, teachers should establish school-parent associations (SPA) and positive behavioral interventions to counter misbehavior among students.
Harsh punishments that involve physical aggression can cause physical harm to the students when not done in moderation. Teachers who fail to control their anger when provoked by learners are likely to use excessive force and extreme physical abuse that may cause bodily harm and some instances, death. According to Rimal (2013), health professionals and legal bodies find it difficult to draw the line between punishment and abuse since different students can react differently to the same physical punishment. Inflicting physical pain on students can develop hatred for education and teachers, causing school dropout. Human beings tend to avoid situations that cause pain, and therefore, learners are likely to be less willing to attend schools that inflict pain. Rimal (2013) argues that physical punishment has limited efficacy as a behavior enforcement method since it does not encourage behavior change. Instead, physical punishment develops a tendency in students to avoid negative behaviors only in the presence of teachers. Besides, physical punishment promotes violence as students receive a message that aggression and torture are solutions to conflict. Therefore, students are likely to engage in violence against other students or teachers when provoked.
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The adverse psychological effects of harsh punishment on students prove that corporal punishments and suspensions cause more harm than good. Harsh punishments may cause personality disorders, anxiety, mood disorders such as depression, and anger-related problems (Rimal, 2013). A skill deficit causes negative behaviors, and therefore, harsh punishment does not address the problem but the result. Thus, failure to address the skill deficit increases the students' chances of replicating the negative behavior even after the harsh punishment (Intervention Central, n.d.). Students with a history of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including domestic violence, neglect, sexual harassment, or extreme poverty, are likely to be psychologically disturbed by harsh punishments since they remind them of past stressful events. According to Golding (2018), students with four or more adverse childhood experiences have a 32 times higher chance of negative behaviors. Harsh punishments re-traumatize the students causing mental disorders and aggressive reactions.
Besides, harsh treatments such as public shaming affect the students emotionally. Harsh treatments trigger the stress hormone and make the student take the fight or flight defensive reaction (Golding, 2018). Consequently, the student develops withdrawal behavior that significantly drops the student's IQ (Golding, 2018). The feeling of sadness and hopelessness due to harsh treatments increase the risk of drug and substance abuse as the student attempts to forget the reality. Continuous emotional pain makes the students very sensitive to the slightest provocation and hence challenging to relate or integrate with others. Generally, adverse effects on students' emotions ruin the relationship between the teachers and the students and reduce the students' responsiveness and commitment to optimal performance and discipline.
School-parent associations (SPA) are effective alternatives to harsh punishments that make teachers better managers in the classrooms. The school-parent association aims to create joint efforts to promote welfare and behavior change in students in all social spheres (Ozmen & Canpolat, 2010). The parents and teachers cooperate to discipline the students depending on what works on each student. Since parents know their children better, the collaboration with teachers enables the teachers to understand the students more and thus decide how to counter negative behavior. The parents and teachers provide moral leadership that students can emulate and gradually achieve behavior change. The school-parent association gives the teacher more control over their class since they can notify parents on the students' behavioral status and demand accountability.
Positive behavior interventions are also ideal alternatives to harsh punishments since they are based on behavior change. Unlike harsh punishments that counter negative behavior among students, positive behavior interventions seek to prevent the negative behaviors. Positive behavior interventions are constructive since they include helping the students identify their negative behaviors and the available measures to change. Positive behavior can consist of a reward system where students are rewarded for changing behavior, increasing the probability of the positive behavior being repeated until it becomes a culture. Besides, positive behavior strategies such as guidance and mentorship create a relationship between the teachers and students, making it difficult for the students to misbehave since they avoid hurting the teachers. Bradshaw et al. (2012) found that positive behavior strategies improve student’s concentration, social-emotional functioning, and pro-social behavior. Statistically, students in schools that uphold positive behavior interventions have a 33% less chance of receiving official discipline (Bradshaw et al., 2012). Essentially, positive behavior interventions address the cause of negative behavior in students by helping students to identify the effects of their conduct and the best methods to achieve behavior change.
In summary, harsh punishments are less effective in behavior enforcement since they cause physical, emotional, and mental harm to learners. Harsh punishments cause injuries or death to students since it is difficult to distinguish between discipline and abuse. Besides, severe punishment causes stress, mental disorders, and emotional sensitivity, leading to dropout, aggression, violence, and drug and substance abuse. School-parents associations are alternatives to harsh punishments that sustain collaboration between teachers and students to enforce positive school or home behavior. Also, strategies that reinforce positive behavior, such as counseling and reward systems, effectively address the root cause of negative behavior, unlike harsh punishments that increase the risk of students' repeating negative behaviors.
References
Bradshaw, C. P., Waasdorp, T. E., & Leaf, P. J. (2012). Effects of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports on child behavior problems. Pediatrics , 130 (5), e1136–e1145. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2012-0243
Golding, J. (2018, December 20). How does harsh discipline affect a teen’s brain? Independent Education Today. https://ie-today.co.uk/health-and-well-being/how-does-harsh-discipline-affect-a-teens-brain/
Intervention Central. (n.d.). What every teacher should know about punishment techniques and student behavior plans . https://www.interventioncentral.org/behavioral-interventions/challenging-students/what-every-teacher-should-know-about%E2%80%A6punishment-techni#:%7E:text=Teachers%20who%20include%20punishment%20as,student’s%20rate%20of%20problem%20behaviors .
Ozmen, F., & Canpolat, C. (2010). The efficiency of school-parent associations (SPA) at schools. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences , 9 , 1947–1954. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.12.428
