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Discipline in the Classroom: Past and Present Essay

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Discipline in the Classroom: Past and Present

Throughout the history of classroom education, many different types of disciplinary systems have been applied by teachers and other authority figures in schools for the sole purpose of controlling student behaviour. These systems include corporal punishment, psychological abuse or neglect, and assertive discipline. Although two of these three topics are illegal at this time, they were all widely used in schools across the country a short time ago.

Corporal punishment in general can be defined as the infliction of pain or confinement as a penalty for an offense committed by a student. During the time that corporal punishment was used by schools all over the United States and …show more content…

Physical abuse accounts for only 20% of the total psychological damage left on abused children. There were many things that were done to children by their classroom teachers that had a far worse result on the student than any physical abuse would ever have. The most common of these is constant humiliation. It was not uncommon for teachers in the past to repeatedly criticize and laugh at a particular students disability, or even creativity for the main reason of punishing the student for a minor offense. Teacher's did this by often reading a student's personal journal to the whole class, reading a students grades, and most often apprehending and degrading the student about his or her appearance, family, or school work in front of the whole class. This kind of humiliation is difficult to take even as an adult, never mind a ten year old child. As a result of this so called "punishment", many students who were constantly embarrassed and degraded over a long period of time suffered from psychological abnormalities such as insomnia, nightmares, and even schizophrenia. Another such psychological "punishment" used by teachers was seclusion. This is not to be confused with the idea of suspension, or removal from class. Seclusion often meant locking misbehaved children up in to small dark closets, or damp dark basements for long periods of time. In one specific case, an eleven year old child who slipped and fell while walking down the hall, was put

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