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Greetings from Guam We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined. - Maria Montessori (1870-1952), Italian educationist That would be the liberal view. In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating. - Michel Foucault (1926-84), French philosopher And that is the conservatives view regarding punishment and discipline in schools. I bring up this subject because we had an incident here on Guam a couple of weeks ago where a teacher taped a student's mouth shut with masking tape. Well actually, she had the student tape her own mouth shut. The student was a 6th grader. We had a similar incident last year in which a substitute teacher taped the mouths of several students. Both cases caused quite a stir. This latest incident made for a hot topic on my friend Myk Powell's talk radio show. Should there be some form of corporal punishment allowed in schools? But the question of corporal punishment and discipline in the classroom is more for the elementary and middle school level. The reason that I am undecided on the issue is because I went to Catholic school where corporal punishment was the norm. In third grade, I had liquid soap put in my mouth and my mouth taped shut because I told another student to 'shut up.' The teacher had run out of the bar soap - which she usually grated back and forth over a student's bottom teeth. I didn't help my case when I exclaimed, 'Praise the Lord, you're out of soap!' To which she promptly grabbed a cup and went to the restroom and got some of that yummy industrial liquid soap. The end result was that my friends made me laugh and I swallowed most it and the rest exited my nose in the form of bubbles - so many that Lawrence Welk would have been impressed. But I think I benefited from the free-wheeling-ruler-toting nuns, in the long run. I am personally undecided on the issue. I do not think it is possible, nor smart nowadays to use corporal punishment in public high schools - especially after the Columbine incident. I have not had any discipline problems personally as a teacher. Maybe therein lies the answer? I am 100% positive that you can tame the toughest kid with humor, kindness, and understanding...and maybe some patience? The trick is to get them to like you and respect you as a person - as one of them - not demand that they respect you because you're an adult and a teacher. Those were the good old days, my friends...and they're gone. As nice as that would be, it is a different game nowadays. But it can be won without any discipline...okay, maybe I am against corporal punishment....Oh, my God! I'm turning into a DEMOCRAT...help me Rush.....AAHHHHRRRHHAAAAAAAA ....EYE of NEWT, come to me...... Sorry about that, I'm in therapy now, so that shouldn't happen again. As I was saying earlier, before I was drugged by Jimmy Carter and his Peace Amongst the Frogs in Nepal Foundation radicals, was that you can do it with just 2 rules: 1. Respect each other. 2. The only person you may laugh at, make fun of, put down, spit on, kick, punch, eye gouge, Atomic Body Slam, perform a tracheotomy on with a spoon and call a crazy White Man, is the teacher. That's it, that's all you need - those two rules, a good sense of humor and the belief that every kid wants to smile and laugh. (They want to be smiled at and laughed with.) I guarantee you do that, and you won't need my two rules. But this applies to high school students only. For 7th and 8th graders, I propose a two-year insane asylum complete with straight jackets, Nurse Rachett, dull and dreary rooms with flickering bluish screens on all the TV's, and sedatives....oh yes, lots of sedatives! No, seriously, for middle school kids, the teachers should be given Tazers, handcuffs, bull whips, armor, and a 50 caliber elephant tranquilizer gun...and full authority to use one or all of their weapons in a first strike preventative measure. No, seriously, I'm sorry...really serious now. This is it, time to be serious. I think the only thing that the middle school teachers would really need would be a nice big machete hanging off their hip. Hey, it worked for the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, why not here? Try winning over your most difficult student - not by kicking him out of class or yelling at him, but by making a conscientious effort to offer him a genuine smile everyday. And believe me, a kid who has not had many genuine smiles flashed at him in his life will know the difference - so be sincere. You have to earn their respect, on their terms - not the other way around... ... OOHH ...No.....Oh God...... there I go again....excuse me while I go fix my bleeding heart... Hafa Adai Copyright © 2000 |
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