ZD- I was in high school 2 years ago, not 30. Also, my point in saying that this punishment was used on me and didn’t scar me or a lot of other people i know and respect shows that there is not necessarily a correlation between get punished in school and going off the derech; which btw is always humiliating…you think getting sent to the principal, sent home, detention etc isn’t? so do you suppose we should never punish our kids? Spoiling kids is worse!!! My point is you can’t take a story about one kid who is off the derech and happens to also have gotten in trouble in this form one time or another and blaim it on this. People make choices, bad choices but they are still theirs and maybe this punishment pushed the kid a little farther but its not the root.
I am not saying there is nothing in schools that need to be fixed, i work in one; I KNOW! I just don’t think this is it. It’s more of an issue of a teacher who doesn’t love/respect their students and can’t control them so gives them punishments in a degrading fashion. You can send a kids down a grade till the kids are in about 4/5th grade. Yes, after that would be humiliating. Before that it depends how the teacher does it. If you know your teacher loves you and really wants the best for you; and Baruch Hashem there are plenty of teachers like that, then the punishment isn’t as humiliating.
Also, very good point about “YOU NEED TO KNOW THE KIDS AND WHAT PUNISHMENTS TO GIVE”- this punishment can be effective and great for one kid and detrimental to another. You can’t make a blanket statement about this form of punishment!