What does punishment at school look like?
Unfortunately, there are meaningful and meaningless forms of punishment at school. Even today there are teachers who yell at children or put them in a corner in front of the whole class if they behave unpleasantly. These forms of punishment are an absolute no-go.
Appropriate punishments in school are detention if a child repeatedly forgets his or her homework or a punishment if a child forgets his or her math book five times despite being announced. The teacher may impose additional homework on the child, give up punitive work, give the child detention or exclude the child from school events or excursions. He may issue a reprimand to the parents and enter the child in the class register.
In hard cases, the child may be excluded from school or transferred to a parallel class. However, the teacher may not punish children arbitrarily. A punishment must be related to the child’s misconduct, must be appropriate and have a purpose.
Parents should intervene if the teacher goes too far. A teacher may not hit, yell at or insult children or bring them before the class, for example because of their poor marks. A teacher must not interfere with a child’s privacy to the extent that he or she reads out a piece of paper between two children aloud or withholds a child’s mobile phone for more than one lesson and lets messages through.
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