Punishing the class when one person misbehaves.

[IslaValargeone]

Is this a standard disciplinary practice? My dc has lost break times in the last couple of weeks because of one person misbehaving. It is really getting on her nerves and I have told her it's up to her to take it up with the teacher, but she doesn't want to get into trouble.
I've told her she'll have to suck it up then, although I do think it's rather unfair.

Bad form imo but very occasionally necessary. I have punished a whole boarding house when there has been theft and noone is admitting to it but I wouldn't do it in the classroom.

It's just lazy teaching really. It doesn't work.

Might be a teaching technique to get peers to put pressure on mis-behaving child if its' the same child each time.

Agree with scurry- lazy and ineffective.

I have taught for 10 years and have never done it. It just serves to further alienate the misbehaving child(ren) from their peers, and usually exacerbates the problem.

Agree with Rosemary. IME it is done as peer pressure is often effective when other measures have failed.

It may occasionally win the battle, but it loses the war.

lazy and mean sanction

I staged a sit in at my school when i was 13, along with a few other delinquents pupils. The school decided it couldn't wouldn't pay for a fellow pupil to go on a residential trip.

The whole year got punished, and i was persona non gratia battered for a long time after. I still have the bruises.

Collective punishment is extreme and unfair IMO.

It's supposed to be effective as it puts peer pressure on the misbehaving student. However as a TA and a Parent I don't like it. I think it damages the staff/student relationship and means that students don't trust their teacher to be fair.

Blimey Pathan that's awful.
I don't think peer pressure will work, from what she tells me about him.

In 15 years of teaching I've never used it. I was warned against this during my PGCE. I have seen teachers use it, but it's not generally considered good practice.

Isla everytime i meet an old pupil who remembers it, i usually end up laughing, but it was horrible for a while.P.E kits down toilets, getting tripped in the corridors, that kind of nonsense.

Looking back i think a lot of the teachers were aware i was suffering for my stance, but chose to ignore it. Probably thought it would teach me a lesson it didn't .

Pretty much what Letchladee said. It seems to me that all you'll do, as a teacher, is make the whole class resent you.

Our primary school used it
It is very irritating for well behaved children to be constantly penalised for the behaviour of other children who they have no influence over.

This kind of unfairness puts otherwise good children off school. They can even predict which days they will be kept in ! "Because John ---- always plays up in Art and we miss our break". After a while they kind of lose heart. Sad but true.

I went to a secondary school where it was general practice. Looking back on it it was a very good way for the school to appear to have high discipline standards while not confronting the poor behaviour of a small group of gits. Who were, and I have to be frank here, chavs.

It had no impact on the gits btw. They had no social consicence which was why they were gits in the first place and successfully erroded what was left of the social conscience of the rest of the class.

It worked when we were kids :)

Currently going through this with DDs school....entire year group kept in for an entire playtime two weeks running with the threat that they will be kept in for an entire lunchtime next week.
this is due to a group of the year talking during a games lesson.
Teachers know who they are, students know who they are, it isn't stopping..effective punishment

Our primary seemed unwilling to deal with bad behaviour by dealing directly with the children behaving badly - some kind of "political correctness" gone mad imo.

Rezolution It is indeed putting her off school. She is only a month into starting this school, we home edded for a short time (12 months) I knew there would obviously be a transition period, but she is coming home demotivated on a daily basis. Tonight she 'doesn't feel well', so doesn't think she'll be going tomorrow :(

Essential, why on earth has it got anything to do with 'political correctness?'

Indeed

I recently posted on this topic as this practice was really beginning to get DS2 (10, Y6) down. It is all regarding an astro-turf pitch at the school which different year groups have to use on different days, so it effectively meant that, due to numbers, the Y6 boys couldn't only not play football, eventually they were banned from even running on it (I have this on good authority) as the pitch became so crowded. This, of course, was regularly flouted.

Having never done so before, I was just on the verge of going up to the school to talk about an ishoo- but it appears I was not alone! It seems the teacher, on parents evening was told over and over again how much the well behaved DC resented these group punishments and how many otherwise well behaved DC were beginning to question whether there was any point in good behaviour if they got punished anyway!

In my opinion, if a school think they are encouraging DC to exert peer-pressure on the miscreant DC(s), they should carefully check the terms of their bullying policy as they could well fall foul of it if all the DC gang up on the wrong-doer(s)!

I am very against this - it will not have any effect on children who persistently behave badly and will teach well-behaved hard-working children that there is no point in behaving well and working hard - they will get punished for the bad behaviour of others anyway.

Peer pressure, my . Thanks goodness the schools my DDs go to don't do this.