On Dec. 2, an Arizona principal punished two high school students who had fought in the courtyard Westwood High School. Principal Tim Richard presented the boys with two options: either be suspended from school for a week, or hold hands in front of everyone at school for a few hours.
Videos surfaced of the two students covering their faces in shame while their peers hurled insults and sneered at the pair’s predicament. Instead of trying to correct the tension between two students, the school had actually increased bullying among the entire student body.
This form of public humiliation as discipline is not an unheard-of concept; many other schools have also begun to adopt “Scarlet Letter”-esque forms of public humiliation to reprimand students.
School administrators intend for these approaches, like any other punishment, to force students to reflect on their misbehavior and to prevent future violation of rules while avoiding the necessary staffing needed to oversee students in orthodox punishments like detention.
Despite honest intentions, these alternative punishments often do not solve the underlying issues. Instead, public humiliation can backfire because it perpetuates a system in which people don’t respect each other at best and bully each other at worst.
While public humiliation may be effective in stopping the troublemakers temporarily, this punishment reaps many consequences for the school in the future.
For one, schools are supposed to teach students how to grow into respectful adults. But how can a student do so when his or her own school has disrespected them? The “sticks-and-stones” saying does not apply in this situation; emotional abuse scars more deeply than physical abuse does. As a result, humiliated students become victims of the administration, placing them in a position schools have to right to place students in.
This loss of respect for the school can in turn create more bullies. It is generally known that bullies are really just kids with low self-esteem. When schools enforce methods involving emotional abuse, which contributes to lowered self-esteem, administrators are initiating a new generation of bullies.
Some may say that as long as the approach proves effective in stopping troublemakers, the approach is good. However, effectiveness is not the question at hand; the effect on the student is. Instead of teaching the students their lesson, schools actually cross over from justified punishment to emotional abuse when they implement public humiliation as a punishment.
