Humiliation is Not Discipline or Correction
When I was in third grade, my teacher, Mrs. Cartwright, didn’t have a behavior chart. She had a paddle. And she used that paddle to control her students, even giving one boy a preemptive whack every morning so he wouldn’t disrupt class. Of course, that didn’t deter him from acting out. Instead, it terrified kids like me. I never spoke voluntarily that year for fear of incurring her wrath.
Now, we are much more humane. We usually don’t physically paddle school kids anymore, although sadly there are some states that still permit this. Instead, we wield the emotional paddle of public behavior charts. For example, the teacher may employ a behavior clip chart to reward students for staying on task by moving up their clips. Unfortunately, she also uses it to discipline kids who talk without raising their hands or don’t complete their work on time. These students are humiliated in front of their peers by having their clips moved down on the behavior charts.
Clips and behavior charts are public displays of how well a child complies. The thinking is that if a child has to move her clip down from “green” to “yellow” because she did not follow directions, forgot to raise her hand, or talked out of turn, she will be motivated to work extra hard to move her clip up again. In reality, what it accomplished is to make her feel is shame and humiliation.
According to educator Justin Minkel in his article from Education Week, Death to the Behavior Chart, he stopped using these classroom management strategies when his young students shared how embarrassed it made them feel to move their clips down in front of the entire class. Instead, he expects his class to follow a reasonable set of rules. He will still ask a student whose behavior disrupts others to move to a different seat or he will communicate with a child’s parents about excessive misbehavior. The difference is, the communication is private and personal.
Coaches and teachers of children’s activities like soccer, skating, gymnastics, dance, and many others too numerous to name also employ versions of humiliation to keep their young charges in line. There was a swim coach who “encouraged” his kids to go faster by throwing kick-boards at them. Or a boy’s track coach who humiliated runners who weren’t trying hard enough by calling them girls. Or a skating coach who screamed at his student, berating her for performing a jump incorrectly, in front of all of the other skaters practicing at the rink.
Yelling at children in front of their peers may make the adult feel better, but it rarely results in teaching children how to improve their behavior or performance. Instead, children feel embarrassed in front of their teammates and they are more likely to repeat the error due to nervousness or to cry in shame. This sets children up to be bullied, teased, or shunned by their peers. Punishing a child with extra laps around a field or push-ups is also unlikely to achieve the desired goal of correcting the child’s mistake or behavior. Private and personal communication yields far better results.
Humiliating children in public, in front of their peers, is the worst way to discipline them or correct their behavior short of corporal punishment. It is punishment of the soul rather than the body. I wish teachers, coaches, and other adults in positions of authority over children would see the harm they do every time they shame them in an effort to control their behavior.
The teachers and coaches I admire most are those who believe in intrinsic motivation to help children to learn and to correct their mistakes. And I thank them for their wisdom, humanity, empathy, kindness, and grace.
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