Now we can't even discipline our students. According to this court decision, parents can't dress their kid in diapers, shave her head and make her run around the neighborhood if she get's an F. If a judge won't let parents do the right thing, I don't expect they would let faculty get away with it.Now I'll have to change my whole syllabus.
I'll bet a court would allow a fraternity or sorority to do this. All I need to do is offer my class as a Greek organization and the problem is solved.
Isn't there a difference between punishment and brutal humiliation that could lead to endangering the victim? Surely we can get the message across without going to such lengths.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, what's really odd here is that the courts themselves increasingly have been using public humiliation as punishment, at least in the U.S.
DeleteMoreover, shaving one's head and running around the neighborhood aren't brutal. Plenty of kids do both of their own accord. As far as dressing in diapers goes, I suppose the only way to enforce this rule is to require everyone to wear underwear on the outside, the way they do in San Marcos.
There goes my dream of making students do push-ups for stupid answers.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. I had a few of my organic chemistry TA's wanting to do this for late arrivals to the lab section. I was assured by University Legal that this was potentially criminal activity and certainly exposed the TA's and the department to civil penalties should a student get hurt doing push-ups.
DeleteAs a Navy veteran with some Army service, I feel those people that want to make their charges do push-ups or flutter kicks, but this isn't the place.
As a Navy veteran myself, I think the cat 'o nine tails and the keel haul show potential.
DeleteI can't help but wish terrible things on those parents. There are certainly more productive ways to encourage a child to get better grades. She's going to hate them forever and they deserve it. Assholes.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter works hard and does well, but if she ever starts slacking off, she's going to get extra chores. She already cleans the toilet once a week. She'll be doing it twice a week. She'll weed the yard, or clean the deck, or any one of a hundred other things that need to be done around here and never get done.
"Study or do extra chores. Your choice." It's a win/win situation.
I wish that I could make my students do this, but that would be unethical. Right? Right?
Ugh. I can't help thinking the parents (and maybe the courts) are addressing (badly, in the parents' case) the symptom rather than the cause. What I can't tell is whether the kid is failing solely because she's too busy trying to survive an abusive home environment, or whether she's got other problems that need addressing, too. If we had a working foster care system, I'd say she'd be better off there; as it is, I very much hope that the whole family got intensive counseling, and that somebody is seriously weighing whether the kid would be better off elsewhere. Human beings are rarely truly motivated in any useful, lasting way by humiliation, or the threat thereof (and I certainly don't want to teach a student at any level who is facing this sort of reaction to failure; it doesn't make for a good learning environment. Extra chores/loss of time-wasting privileges I can handle, especially if the problem really is self-discipline).
ReplyDelete