Punishment Essay Paper
Punishment in the teaching space is a method for modifying behavior. The benefits of punishment psychology are evidence-based. Constructive punishment concentrates on natural penalties and amends kids’ behavior in the anticipated direction.
Behaviorists warn against using retribution to regulate behavior, arguing that behavior can be controlled and modified using reinforcement instead of penalizing. Punishment has negative and positive effects, including triggering aggressive behavior and eliminating unsettling conduct.
Reasons For Punishment
Punishment eradicates troublemaking and unsettling behavior. Scholars understand the consequences of unacceptable conduct through disciplining. For example, constructive penalty alters scholars’ behavior in the desired course. Educators who set clear behavioral expectations assist scholars in developing positive actions and behaviors. Apprentices learn that negative conduct results in disciplining, while positive conduct is rewarded. Students who act out or cause trouble in a classroom disrupt others’ learning experiences.
Instructors act as moral and pedagogical agents to shape students’ moral habits, intentions, and feelings when they punish scholars for morality breaches (Hand, 2020). Punishment helps regulate inappropriate behavior to create a positive learning environment. Retribution methods like detention, corporal punishment, and suspension improve the learning environment.
Punishment augments respect for authority and supports classroom safety. Scholars accustomed to classroom punishment realize the essentiality of respecting authority. Punishment also safeguards teachers and scholars from threatening behavior, encompassing abusive and violent conduct. Learners learn to respect peers and teachers and follow orders and guidelines through punishment.
Students can apply this concept to all stages of their academic careers, personal lives, and employment. Punishment serves as a mechanism of deterrence, moral formation, and enforcement (Hand, 2020). It sets clear boundaries and inspires students to behave morally in school. Punishment eliminates classroom threats and upsurges respect for authority.
Reasons Against Punishment
Punishment can serve as a reward and is only effective when it occurs constantly. Unlike rewards that work best when offered irregularly, punishment is effective when given continuously. The extent of vigilance and observance necessitated to monitor behavior to punish every incidence of undesired conduct is hardly possible. Hence, the undesired conduct is intermittently reinforced on failure to punish it, sponsoring its continuation.
Punishment regularly fails to avert undesirable behavior and can occasionally augment the undesired response’s occurrence. Zero penalty enhances creativity, student transparency with teachers, problem-solving skills, relationships, and communication skills (Latif et al., 2020). Attention is a form of reward. It is difficult for teachers to punish scholars without paying attention. Hence, a penalty might be more rewarding than disciplining.
Punishment has detrimental side effects such as adverse emotional reactions, aggressive behavior, and general behavioral suppressions. The pain of punishment, particularly detention and corporal penalty, results in a display of aggression towards the pain source or a blameless victim.
Teaching and encouraging discipline is the initial step to stopping punishment (Sidin, 2021). A damaging connection exists between punishment administration and scholars’ academic performance (Latif et al., 2020). Punishment also stimulates strong expressive responses that might generalize. The extent and direction of generalization are overpowering when an emotional reaction is triggered, resulting in apprehension, excessive anxiety, self-punishment, and guilt. Scholars might also learn to suppress or inhibit the punished behavior only under surveillance.
Punishment is used for educational purposes and facilitates the learning process. Some argue that reinforcing positive and desirable behavior is better than punishing undesirable conduct. Others assert that punishment helps regulate and modify negative behavior. Teachers should maintain consistency and reduce reliance on physical punishment to make it more effective.
References
Hand, M. (2020). On the necessity of school punishment. Theory and Research in Education, 18(1), 10-22. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1477878520907039
Latif, S., Islam, M. R., & Saeed, S. (2020). Impacts of Zero Punishment on Student’s Behavior and Classroom Learning at Government Primary Schools. CenRaPS Journal of Social Sciences, 2(3), 427-438. https://doi.org/10.46291/cenraps.v2i3.46
Sidin, S. A. (2021, March). The Application of Reward and Punishment in Teaching Adolescents. In Ninth International Conference on Language and Arts (ICLA 2020) (pp. 251-255). Atlantis Press. https://dx.doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210325.045
Punishment Essay Paper Instructions
For this assignment you will write a 2-3 page typed paper arguing both for and against the use of punishment. You can include information on ethics and the right to effective treatment in your arguments as well as any side effects that may be observed when using punishment. You should use 2 references (preferably from a journal, book, or web-based journal article or book- not just a webpage please) to support your case on each side. I did post a book for you on blackboard for your use under course materials if you’d like any further reading on the topic. PLEASE do NOT focus the paper on corporal punishment (we are not talking about corporal punishment) but the use of punishment that typically occurs in the classroom.