My daughter's class last year got punished from recess for a week after a fight broke out. I did not have a problem with it, but many other parents did. They all met with the administration and the punishment was lifted.
I don't believe it should be used all the time, but I believe group punishments works. It is used in the military.
Sometimes it's not fair, but I believe children need to learn that life isn't always fair.
This sort of punishment makes me crazed, and I've never even had it happen to my kid! I feel it's a lazy and TERRIBLY misguided way to get kids to behave. I'm right there with AJ--it's peer pressure and you're targeting the wrong kids to apply the pressure. I also resent that the teacher is, in essence, making the "good" kids punish the "bad" kids--discipline is the teacher's job--not the students, and it should not be put upon them.
We have a teacher in the first grade who does this and it's just coming to the parents' attention. In this case though it's not for misbeahvior, but for missed spelling words!! Whatever words are wrong on ANY of the tests the ENTIRE class has to write them 10 times. And it's funny, even though the teacher never points out the "spelling impaired" the whole class seems to know who they are any way and naturally have comments to make to them. The principal is useless and has done nothing to rectify the situation.
I'd personally speak to the teacher (nicely, which I am actually capable of doing believe it or not), with a follow-up in writing which is cc-ed to the principal, superintendent and BOE. If you get no recourse take it up the ladder to the principal etcetera. The retaliation thing is a b!tch--the aforementioned teacher in our school is proving to do all sorts of manipulatory things with kids and parents--thank God one is fighting it out with her now. To be honest if I saw retaliation that would push me over the edge and if it didn't stop immediately I'd be at the next BOE meeting making it into a case. This sort of thing IS one of the battles you should pursue. It's usually just the tip of the iceberg.
Funny, the same thing happened a couple of years ago with my son, who has never been disciplined at school prior to the 4th grade, and it involved a second year teacher.
Several students acted up, and were told they would lose recess the following day. The next day came, and my son, and several others left the glass to attend their gifted class for the day. Their teacher told their gifted teacher to not let them go to recess, yet allowed those students remaining in class to "earn" back their recess time. However, she forgot to allow the gifted class the same opportunity. I did approach her, and she out and out admitted that not one of the gifted students were involved in the original crime. Essentially, she punished 8 kids who had absolutely nothing to do with the crime, yet let the others go out for recess.
The only thing I'd add to the discussion already is that perhaps before going to the principal you should try to talk directly to the teacher about this and your feelings and that you don't want to go over her head to the principal so hopefully the teacher can change her tactics. If not tell her - in the nicest possible way - that you have no choice but to bring the matter to the principal's attention.
This seems to be a policy in our school district. Honest, it was used throughout the school in the elementary K-5 and is used at lunchtime in the middle school. I think it's come about because teachers hands are tied in regards to discipling the consistently ill-behaved kids. I couldn't even tell you how many times the whole class would miss recess because a few kids would misbehave. Now in middle school if some kids act out during lunch the whole grade level gets assigned seating for the rest of the semester. That's 250 kids.
The whole class punishment was used alot when I was in elementary school a "few" years ago. I was painfully shy. Though I did have a few friends that I would talk to and breaking a rule was not an option I wanted to explore (my how things did change through the years). We just felt that was part of life and yes we definately used peer pressure. My fourth grade class was really bad. Matter of fact I think a few of those grew up to be jailbirds. We would have to write sentences. We always had warnings though. This method is used in the middle grades alot. I hate to see it happen but I understand why a teacher would use that as a last resort. Especially for older kids who know rules and why they should be followed.
I don't see how a child can be punished when he/she is not in the room. I believe I would have heart to heart with the teacher if it happened again and if that didn't work I would talk with the principal to get his/her point of view.
