How the School Disciplinary System Turns Good Kids into Bad Kids.

Destinations, suspensions, and expulsions have been a staple of the school discipline policy for decades, but these tactics have been proven to be futile according to psychological research. The school disciplinary system is based on the age-old tactic of positive reinforcement or the addition of a stimulus such as a detention note. This positive reinforcement only recognizes bad behaviors, and it has been proven to create a resentment between a student and their discipliner. Not to mention countless researchers such as Dr. Ruth Payne, that have discovered that traditional "behavior modification" does not affect behavior in adolescents. Dr. Paynes surveyed a group of students from the ages 11-16 about their attitudes toward school discipline. Dr. Paynes concluded that not only did punishments such as destinations, suspensions, and expulsions annihilate the student-teacher relationship, but it also labeled students with negative reputations. For example, when an academically accelerated student who is known as a good-hearted person gets a detention for a mistake, teacher's and administrators would look upon that student negatively. Therefore there's no point distributing detentions in mass numbers when it's been proven that the system doesn't work.

Then whats the solution? Well, not everything is so direct. Every studied is unique with different methods that work for them. Some students only need a disciplinary talk to have them "scared straight" while another student benefits from standard school discipline. Not everyone is the same but one penalty that has been favored by psychologists is volunteering. Volunteering has been shown to implement a sense of purpose which has been shown to constructively better an individual.