Two readings of an academic nature that I've been tackling for thesis purposes have really struck home regarding my assumptions and associations of what a school, and schooling, are. The first is Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault, and the second is The Activities of Teaching by Thomas F. Green. Both are pretty abstract but their relevance to practice and the every-day is not difficult to see. I'm just going to talk about reflections on punishment today, and leave the Green reading for a later post.
Much of Foucault's work stems around the social, and Discipline and Punish is particularly focused on social institutions and processes that enforce penalty of some kind: prisons etc. Naturally, one of these institutions has traditionally been the school--even the cover of the book draws on that classic Victorian method of punishment from a despotic teacher: the wooden ruler.
Just on seeing this book jacket, mental images are immediately conjured up of corporal punishment, writing lines, detention, suspension or, that ultimate of school penalties: expulsion.
Expulsion: that process that says "we are so hellbent on punishing you as an individual that we will deny you access to education" (yeah right: because that's exactly what is going to help a troubled teen work their way through those difficult years... a lack of education. Seems to me to be a recipe for turning a troubled teen into a troubled adult).
Chatting with the principal of the new school, I confess my mind turned to that automatic question that every new teacher wants to ask: "what are the sanction processes if a student causes trouble?".
Straight away I resented myself for asking it: it immediately exposed how deeply internalised the idea of a school-as-a-place-of-sanction has become in my mind. I want to undo that line of thinking before I start working in the new school. At a superficial level I think I've long decided I disagree with the sanctioning structures schools normally impose, and this manifested in my prior teaching job as a deep-seated reluctance to use the school sanctioning system. The system was "3 warnings and you're out".
1 warning = no sanction yet;
2 warnings = come back at a time of the teacher's choosing;
3 warnings = get out of class and go to the "parking" room where an on-duty teacher will supervise you doing work isolated.
It hardly ever worked. On being ejected from the room, students would walk around the school feeling jaded and excluded (because they were), causing trouble with other classes and generally refusing to do anything they were asked to do; or alternatively, they would refuse to leave the room because actually they wanted to be there, but wanted attention, and senior staff being called in to remove them. The resultant conflict and tension was as disruptive, if not more, than what the student was doing in the first place. The other students would witness the spectacle, and the 'loss of face' for the student in question, further eroding what little self-esteem they may have had.
Parents would get called in: interviews with senior staff, student and parents would result in parents questioning the teachers' judgment and capability of handling a class (that they should need to resort to excluding a child from the room) and staff justifying their position and why the student needed to now miss 3 days of school on suspension. It made more work for the teacher, who then was supposed to collect work for the student to do while at home so that the student didn't miss out on learning (this hardly ever happened). So the student returns having missed lessons, even less likely to be able to follow, feeling they've been publicly shamed, and therefore more likely to start causing trouble as a mechanism of hiding their distress at feeling 'stupid' or 'bad'. The relationship between the student and the teacher was often irreparably damaged. And so we'd start all over again.
I hardly ever issued warnings: you can see why I was reluctant to start with the whole process. That said, there were one or two students with whom I just didn't know what else to do. It didn't work at all. We ended up really resenting each other, and meetings between us was enough to make all of our days' really horrid.
The common 'justification' for the process was that we had to think about all the learners in the room, not just one, and if learning was not happening as a result of one student, then we owed it to the others to 'minimise the risk' by excluding that one student.
But how much were we 'minimising the risk' really? That student would come back again. In fact, we were probably creating a more systemic chronic disruption to that entire class long-term by constantly engaging in battle with this student, exercising our power and authority over them punitively (and that's Foucault's point really: that it's about creating and enforcing power structures). They've already demonstrated their willingness to engage in self-destructive behaviour as a mechanism of resistance. Me asserting my authority over them is not going to change that.
What is it that they are trying to resist?
So far, as a teacher, most of what I've learned about troubled students is that the resistance is not against me. It's not personal. It's the student often trying to resist the identity that they feel society is forcing on them, the labels that they automatically bear by simply not fitting well into a very narrow form of behaviour: "stupid", "slow", "restless", "weak", "bad". They are feeling powerless, and their instant response is to try and claw back a little semblance of power by disrupting, to exercise control by causing "trouble" instead.
Referring back to my earlier question, "what are the sanction processes if a student causes trouble?", what is meant exactly by "trouble"? A person who doesn't enjoy sitting in a chair for hours on end? A person who prefers to learn by doing rather than by book? A person who perhaps doesn't remember facts easily? A person who feels uncomfortable and wants to 'get away' when placed in a situation which really doesn't suit them at all? Because this description fits most adults too. Labelling it as 'troublesome' is to pathologise normal behaviour.
So by 'trouble' do we mean ' a person who doesn't fit into a very narrow definition of how things are done?' When put in such a position, un-self-regulated teenager acts out their internal feelings about the situation instead of suppressing their reaction as 'inappropriate'. This is one of the things I like about teenagers... they are not yet clipped and pruned into what society likes to call 'proper behaviour'. i.e. that behaviour which is self-regulated, self-suppressive and a little soul destroying. They sense that they do not fit, that they are marginalised and seen as less, and they respond naturally by resisting.
Perhaps, by 'trouble', we are talking about them defying our power. It always bothers me that teachers who see no problem with heavy punitive measures love to use the word defiance. For some teachers, it seems, their favourite part of the job is being powerful. In the realm of our classrooms, on our own without observer or witness, we are the kings of our domain. We are supremely powerful. I think some teachers get off on that. My father often recollects a particular teacher at his own school who couldn't hide his glee when he received students in his office to administer corporal punishment. Dad's response? To team up with his friends and between them notch up so many blows that the teacher was not physically fit enough to administer them. Yup: his way of resisting and 'taking back power' was to keep coming back for continuous beatings until the teacher almost keeled over from exhaustion. That's the degree to which students will go to resist the power exerted over them.
Back to my question to the principal: I think the reason the question popped out of my mouth is because I am afraid. I'm afraid of an unknown: I've never been, myself, a member of an institution that has done things differently to what I've described above. I can't yet imagine the alternative. And, having been involved with some students who have been physically violent in their resistance, fear is an understandable reaction.
But there can be no denying that the standard school punishment paradigm is deeply problematic: the only 2 outcomes are to either break a student into submission (and all the psychological effects that come with it) or to constantly engage in a ratchet effect of who can outdo whom in an attempt to do so, by whatever means necessary.
Here in SA, violence is an endemic natural part of our lives, and we have become desensitized to it. Despite corporal punishment being officially illegal, it is widespread and common place: and in some cases, the imagination exercised in dreaming up ways of administering pain as a mechanism of control is horrific. If only teachers exercised that amount of imagination in their lesson planning! Physical pain inflicted by those who have power over you is normal in our schools: teacher-to-student, student-to-student and, unfortunately, sometimes teacher-to-teacher. How can we then be surprised that our students grow up seeing violence as a legitimate form of exercising control? How can we be surprised that we have so many violent adults? We are breeding violence in our schools, and I believe that a culture of Victorian discipline and punishment that has persisted, combined with the deep psychological scars and issues of power that our history has brought us, is the cause.
I don't believe teachers should enjoy the power they exercise over students. Our role is one of great responsibility (insert cheesy Spiderman quote here). We have an inordinate amount of control over these kids' lives. We certainly should not be condoning physical pain as a means of control. We shouldn't be exercising psychological pain as a form of control either. Nor should we be denying our students their basic right to learn as a means of punishment.
It's got to come from respect, somewhere. From seeing the student as a human being who is vulnerable, prone to fear and feelings of inadequacy, and providing a space where their resistance serves no purpose because it is not needed. They need not resist, because who they are is OK as is, irrespective of age, language, gender, prior attainment, preference. As long as you're respecting other people, and not insisting on exercising control over them, then you are welcome as you are: jumpy or calm, loud or quiet, a reader or a doer.
With this in mind, I'm going to take the following ideas into my new classroom in January:
1. No student of mine is going to miss out on learning because they don't fit in.
2. Punishment is not the answer.
I've got to remember that I'm the powerful one here. Not the student. I need to exercise that power cautiously.
Let's start there and see how it goes.
