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Hi friends! I’ve noticed that some people have misunderstood the point of this video, and I want to make sure that I am communicating clearly. I am not advocating for all forms of corporal punishment, especially not extreme forms of corporal punishment like hitting a child. In modern times, the definition of corporal punishment has been broadened to include things like writing lines, walking laps at recess, and community service.

In the past, corporal punishment primarily referred to paddling, which is not at all what I am advocating for. I would not be comfortable paddling another person’s child, and if I had kids, I would not be comfortable having a teacher paddle my child. With that said, I do think it is important for kids to have consequences, and I believe that they need to be unpleasant enough to be a deterrent.

My theory is that the pendulum has swung from too much discipline and extreme zero tolerance policies to almost no discipline, and that is why so many schools are having out of control behavior problems. I’m not opposed to all modern discipline philosophies like Love and Logic and Positive Discipline, because that method works for some students. However, they don’t work for all students and maybe not even most students. Some students will only follow rules in order to avoid negative consequences, and it is the same with adults.

A lighthearted example is speeding! How many people do you know who will obey all speed limits at all times as a matter of principle? I’d guess maybe 10% or less. How many people do you know who don’t care about speeding even if a police officer is right there? Maybe 10% or less. The rest of us are somewhere in between always following the law and being willing to break the law, and most of that depends on how likely we believe we are to get a speeding ticket. However, 95% of the time, when people see a cop they slow down because a speeding ticket is a deterrent!

I believe schools need to have age appropriate consequences to deter students from bad behavior. I mostly taught middle school, so a deterrent could be afterschool detention, lunch detention, or even Saturday detention or ISS, but many schools discouraged those consequences. I also think community service would be great, but of course, that is rarely allowed. When I taught 4th and 5th grade, holding kids in for recess or having them walk laps at recess was an effective deterrent, but I was told I couldn’t do that. I also tried having them write lines, but I was told that that was corporal punishment. As you can see, all the consequences that would work were forbidden, and I saw the negative impact of those policies, which is what I discuss across this channel.

The moral of the story is that kids can behave if they are motivated to! When the motivation is positive and intrinsic, that is wonderful! Understandably, sometimes kids need external motivation like rewards, and I am fine with that too. Realistically, many kids (especially today) lack internal motivation and aren't moved by external rewards, and they actually need consequences that are unpleasant enough to be a deterrent. Having those consequences doesn't mean that we stop talking to them or working with them, but for many people just knowing that there might be a negative consequence is enough to make them think twice and follow the rules.