essy: Please don’t take offense. I don’t know who you are, and all I am doing is responding to words. My line to treat students like humans was addressed generically; if you do so, then good. My experience has been that many teachers do not do so–they think the regular rules of bein adom l’chaveiro are somehow suspended for students.
I assume a punishment is to cause pain, because there are 4 general theories of punishment.
1. Deterrence. This is the most popular theory among the general populace. It means that you make the expected cost of the action more “expensive” than the benefit. So that if you save a dollar by not paying a meter, and will get caught one in 25 times, the punishment must be at least $25. The idea is to impose a punishment which will hurt enough to deter the action.
2. Retribution. This is the most true one. Society punishes because it makes us feel good that guilty people are punished. That is why we punish bank robbers more seriously than embezzlers, even though embezzlers do more harm. This is the notion that a rebbe should never feel toward a talmid.
3. Rehabilitation. The idea is that being in prison can teach the criminal new skills and a new way to deal with life. We are not punishing, we are just helping. In this type, it does not matter whether the person is blameworthy, only that the criminal is doing socially unwanted actions.
4. Incapacitation. Popular among liberals, it is just that you can’t rob banks from prison.
i did say that other teachers put kids in my class pretty regularly and i know they’re told that they can’t behave/do their work with their class so they’ll do it with the third grade. thats very different than being called a “baby”
No, it is exactly the same as being called a baby. I am astounded you would claim otherwise.
i said: i think that just as you put a kid in the corner in playgroup when he hits, or send him to his room to calm down, a kid can be put in the hallway, or computer lab, or office, or diff class to do his work. a step more severe, which i’ve never had to do, is to put a kid in a lower class. this takes away the reinforcement he gets from his classmates and makes him do his work.
If you don’t do it, then I commend you. However, please recognize that it is not a step further on the same continuum as being sent to the computer lab. It is an insinuation that one belongs with younger children. That is a reason they don’t send the kid to the older class.