Crime and Punishment in schools. Or not.

Like families, clubs or indeed any microcosm of society, schools sometimes have to deal with behavioural issues, of all types. People do, from time to time, behave in ways which go against the values and expectations of the organisations of which they are a part. For many businesses, this is a curse and needs to be dealt with firmly – through disciplinary actions and sackings. These behaviours disrupt the core purpose of the business.

Some folk might say that exactly the same thing applies to schools; if the role of school is simply to nail the academics, get students to Universities, make them follow the rules of the system, then perhaps there is indeed a similarity. If, however, our job is to support students to learn to be thoughtful, kind people who can improve systems, not just accept the status quo then it’s not quite the same thing. It may sounds like Doublespeak to label misbehaviours as learning opportunities but really, that’s the truth.

So a lot depends on one’s purpose, as always; and I find this graphic from NZ -based restorative schools very helpful. It seems clear to me that we want to offer high levels of support, care and concern; and at the same time have high expectations, clear limits and structures.

The graphic clarifies and reinforces that punitive approaches are as undesirable as permissive ones. Poor behaviour is a problem (often involving life outside school) that needs to be solved; and we know the best way to solve problem is to do it with the people involved.

I can appreciate that those families with a more traditional paradigm of education may not see the difference between the restorative and permissive quadrants; especially where our own children are suffering. A few years ago when my own daughter, now graduated, was horribly bullied, I confess that the idea of punishment was initially attractive. Anything else felt permissive and sloppy. Fortunately my colleagues helped me out, and the situation was resolved with a restorative approach.

And that leads me to the central point here; that in deciding how to approach this we are often guided by our own feelings. We are entitled to feel however we want, and there are no subjects more emotive than our own children. But feelings are not a good guide to policy, and the best policy is one that works to prevent poor behaviours, so that kids learn to behave better. In the end therefore, this comes down to an empirical question – what works to stop bad behaviors?

Please watch this rather brilliant one minute video from the World Economic Forum; not on what is just or right (which are highly subjective) but on what works (which can be measured):

You can imagine how this can be made to sound ludicrous – what? made to read novels as a punishment for public disorder! How ridiculous! But this comes back to my first point – it’s not a punishment, and we need to leave that paradigm behind. This striking point here is that the restorative approach is the hard-headed, practical one, even if it does not feel that way. Punishment, in many cases, does not solve issues – indeed it can often make them worse (in the case of bullying, it makes the bullies sneakier and more likely to enlist others to bully the victim).

None of this is to say that schools can solve all problems (I recently wrote Student (mis)behaviours: When is enough enough?) but it does mean that we need to be patient and not immediately reach for the easy solution of punishment.