Home Page Punishments deprive young people of taking responsibility for their own actions. Punishment moves ownership of the problem from the student to the teacher. In the classroom, punishment is too often used for those who don't need it. These students will respond without punitive action. The threat of punishment may coerce a student to act appropriately in one class but have no effect on the way the student interacts with others outside of that class.
Punishment is temporary and transitory.
Punishment in the classroom arouses resentment and invariably diminishes student motivation to learn what the teacher desires. Punishment, by its very nature, is counterproductive to good teaching because punishment fails to foster responsibility, cooperation, or positive motivation. The use of punishment in the classroom automatically creates an adversarial relationship between the teacher and the student. This adversarial relationship oftentimes results in the student's testing the teacher to see how much the student can get away with. Some young people test the limits of acceptability.