VietNamNet Bridge - A high school in Quang Ngai Province uses strange discipline methods: cut students’ hair, pants or sandal straps.

Discipline rules are important tools to maintain and ensure smooth operations at school. Yet, certain discipline methods used by some schools and teachers in HCM city are quite startling.

From discipline writing to cleaning litter

Discipline writing is a common way to punish students who don’t do their assignments. These students have to write down assignments they miss in scores, hundreds or even thousands of times. Mrs. H., who has a child studying at C. High School (Hoc Mon, HCM city), said with concern, “school assignments already create a lot of pressure. Having to take mandatory as well as those preparatory intensive extra classes, my child just studies and studies, having no time at all for TV. The other day he was too tired, so he did not memorize a lesson. His teacher afterward requested him to copy down this lesson 600 times. He had to stay up throughout the night to do it! Only because he missed one lesson once, he didn’t have time for other subjects. So on the next day, he missed assignments on these subjects and had to do the discipline writing again. His sister and I pitied him so much that we helped him to write, so that he’d have time to do his homework, or he’d get punished again.”

Another parent had complaints to make about school discipline. His daughter, a student in 11th grade who had broken a rule, had to climb onto the tin rooftop of the parking house…to clean litter! “Is it necessary to make her do that? Being a girl, she would feel embarrassed before friends, not to mention that this sort of punishment is very dangerous. Isn’t there any other method in the school’s discipline book?”

Ms. T, an official at District 12 Office of Education, said that N. High School uses a very inappropriate discipline method. According to school rules, students who come to class 5 minutes after class starts are not allowed to go in. Not only do students miss this first class, they are not permitted to attend later classes either. Though the purpose of rules is to create discipline within the school, many rules need to be reconsidered.

Last year, a high school student came to class late because of an accident. With arms and legs terribly scratched, he appeared before the class proctor who blindly followed the rule and did not allow him to enter class. “Not being allowed to enter class, students have no other choice but wander around, which is very dangerous, because most of them fear that their parents will scold them when they know the cause of the dismissal. Where do these students go, and what do they do until the time to go home?” Ms. T. said feelingly.

Many discipline methods do not hurt the body, but the mind of students, especially high school students. A student in 11th grade at C.High School in Hoc Mon said that her geography teacher often uses very severe words to scold those who can’t do their assignments. “Are you so cross-eyed as not to see the answer? Why is your IQ so low? Why are you so stupid?...” Some math teachers also scold or expel students for the day because they can’t solve problems. Those students often feel degraded and resentful when coming to class.

Don’t hurt student’s feelings or dampen their will

Public opinions have been loud against those discipline methods that hurt students’ feelings and harm their bodies such as forcing them to walk on knees around classrooms, lick chairs, run around schoolyards under the sun until they faint, or sit with heads pulled back, stuffing their mouths with rags, expelling them from class … Discipline is a tool to better students’ behavior, but in many instances, teachers use discipline methods simply to vent their temporary anger without telling students how to improve.

Ms. T. worriedly commented, “as employees, we adults sometimes run late ourselves because of traffic or our motorbikes break down on the way….Students are only half children, half adults. If students are late, they can be punished by having to wait in the proctor rooms until the next class. After all, the purpose of schools is to educate. To make students behave, we can reduce their conduct grades. There is a variety of options out there. Why do we insist on being inflexible?”

Disagreeing with the discipline writing method, Mrs. H. proposed: having so many assignments to do, students are likely to miss some. If students somehow fail to study their lessons, teachers should examine them on another day to make sure the lessons are studied. Being forced to write a lesson hundreds of times not only puts students under great pressure, but also takes up so much of their precious time that they can’t study other lessons. They will be similarly punished for not learning these lessons. So the writing circle will just go on and on. Besides, is it certain that one can know a lesson well simply by coping it down over and over again?”

“Any kind of education has two sides: reward and punishment. Punishment is a necessary tool to make students conform to certain rules. However, punishment methods must be used on an individual basis. Students’ ages and health must be considered. Punishment must not hurt students’ integrity. We punish because we want students to improve, not because we want to degrade or discourage them,” said the education psychologist Dinh Phuong Duy.

Not long ago, a student at Q. High School (Tan Binh) was beaten black and blue from the butt down to the legs by the math teacher for being unable to solve some problem. For a similar failure, an English teacher used another kind of discipline the student’s parents had to admire.

The teacher called the parents to school, and reminded them to help and guide the student in his studies. Thus, the two different approaches created different feelings as well as effects on students’ outcomes. No matter what teachers do, they should not forget that their ultimate aim is to improve students’ outcomes. If they carefully choose their discipline methods in order to educate and shape students’ behavior, they can achieve this aim, instead of pushing students to the brink of resentment and indignation.

(Source: Tuoi Tre)