Discipline at school is one thing
that is expected by teachers to their students to have. Not only at school, but
discipline also is expected to be done by people in every time and every place.
Discipline itself, comes from Latin word which means to give definition and
rule in life. In the implementation, it is better to have discipline with no
violence.
For many children around the world,
violence is a regular part of school experience. In some countries, such as Indonesia
No violence in implementing
discipline, especially at school, seems to be a hard-work for teachers and
school security. Seeing students or children doing mistakes makes teachers and
parents angry. Sometimes and often, this anger will lead the teachers or
parents to give a punishment. Corporal punishment is one punishment that might
be chosen by them.
Actually, what does corporal
punishment mean? The National Association of School Nurses defines it as “the
intentional infliction of physical pain as a method of changing behavior. It
may include methods such as hitting, slapping, punching, kicking, pinching,
shaking, use of various objects (paddles, belts, sticks, or others), or painful
body postures.”
According to the definition above, corporal
punishment becomes a way that is chosen by parents or teachers in order to
change their children or students bad behavior. This means they want to change
something bad by using a bad action too. Then, questions appear; should the
children get corporal punishment? Do the parents or teachers realize the impact
of the corporal punishment given?
As what has been told above that it
is often make parents or teachers angry seeing their children or students
making mistakes or doing something which is not expected to do. In fact, the
corporal punishment is not necessarily needed. This is because this kind of
punishment will lead to a bad impact. There are other kinds of punishment which
are better to be done and will provide meaningful treatment for the children or
students.
Giving corporal punishment may
provide advantages or positive impacts. But, actually, it provides more bad
disadvantages or negative impacts.
The bad impact that may happen in
implementing the corporal punishment is children or students will get wrong
message from the punishment they get. For example; a mother found her son
kicking his sister, then the mother pinched her son with no explanation. It is
good when the boy think that it is not allowed to kick or hurt someone. But,
what if he thinks that violence have to be punished with violence too?
The same way happens at school. Many
teachers think that, students’ fearless on corporal punishment will lead to
teachers’ power and this make teachers look wiser. Teachers think if students
have got this feeling, they will be easier to control, so class discipline will
be achieved.
This must be a stupid thinking.
Should the students suffer from sickness just for teachers’ stupid thinking of
their wisdom and power?
Philosophically, parents have
realized their responsibility in disciplining and punishing their children. They
realize that they have to do that for their children’s good also. Even, in
tradition, corporal punishment is accepted as one of effective method in
controlling and disciplining children.
But, as told before, this is not the
only way in controlling children or students. Bad impact of implementing
corporal punishment can be in form of active and passive reaction of children.
Active reaction can be seen directly when the punishment is being in progress.
For example; yelling, stamping their foot, etc. While the passive one is not
being performed directly to their parents or teachers. They will show it in
other chance when their parents or teacher are not be with them. For example;
they will direct their anger to their sister, brother, friends, or even their servant.
Another bad impact of corporal
punishment is that the corporal punishment will decrease the motivation of
children or students in doing some activities that they must do. So, in next
time, children or students will do those activities just because they are scare
of punishment that will be given.
Nowadays, more people disagree about
corporal punishment given on children and students. They have realized the
negative impact of giving this kind of punishment. Barbara Coloroso in “Kids
Are worth It” says that children can learn from their fault and can change
their bad behavior without any punishment. She thinks that the more frequency
of punishment given will not give something which is constructing their life.
It will just make the children feel unhappy and be suffered.
According to Neil A. S. Summerheil
in “A Radical Approach to Children Rearing” says that corporal punishment will
frustrate the children. Corporal punishment does not make the children to do
their job properly. Children will give up with the punishment; they prefer to
be punished to doing the job. Dobson in “Dare to Discipline” says that corporal
punishment will stop children to do their wrong behavior. Physical punishment
will bring bad impact. Even, it can push the children to do worse actions.
Also, Leonard D. Eron shows that
corporal punishment will push the children to do some aggressive acts. It gets
worse when parents increase the frequency of corporal punishment to react with
their children’s aggressive acts. Here, parents do not realize that they have taught
their children to do another aggressive action.
Another bad impact of implementing
corporal punishment is that it can cause long and short term of psychological
impact. For the short term impact; children will be angry, dissatisfy, and hate
for a while. But in the long term, children may grudge for years, amnesia, and
lack of sense. Not only psychological, but also physical is included. It can
cause injury, wound, suffer from physical defect, or even die.
Realizing all the bad impacts caused
by the implementing of corporal punishment, world has worked against corporal
punishment. People disagree with the implementation of this kind of punishment
because it will break the young. Human Right Watch works to highlight this
abuse. Government has provided regulations which regulate the punishment. All
sides work with their capability in solving this problem.
Finally, the best way to teach our
children about discipline is not by giving them any corporal punishment, but by
giving them any good examples of doing something. By that way, children will
learn about what they should to do and what they should not to do. Another
non-corporal punishment is time-out method which is done by isolating children
in an uncomfortable room for several minutes. Or, children are asked to do any
work that is hated by them, such as cleaning the toilet, sweeping, no watching
television, etc. But, it is better to have a warning before doing the
punishment.
Thank you,
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