Once, we smoked in office buildings.
Not just on breaks or in private spaces—at desks, in meeting rooms, on airplanes. The haze of other people’s choices was something you had no right to escape. That was just how things were.
Until it wasn’t.
Now, the idea of someone lighting a cigarette during a staff meeting feels impossible, almost farcical. We don’t debate whether it’s allowed. We recoil. We enforce norms—often without needing to name them. Cultural change doesn’t happen all at once, but when it succeeds, it rewrites what we think of as common sense.
That’s what we need for collective punishment in BC schools. Not just a ban. Not just an IEP exemption or a reminder email from a principal. We need a cultural shift so thorough that it becomes humiliating to admit you ever thought it was okay.
Cultural change doesn’t begin with rules. It begins with revulsion.
We like to imagine that culture is slow-moving, intangible, or too big to tackle—but in reality, culture is constantly being shaped. And it can be reshaped, on purpose.
Every major reversal in social norms has followed a pattern. Not a perfect formula, but a set of steps that show up again and again: public awareness, evidence-based persuasion, legal scaffolding, visible enforcement, media attention, and moral momentum. Change becomes possible when the people who benefit from the status quo no longer feel safe defending it.
Let’s look at how some of the most successful cultural shifts were made.
- Smoking bans didn’t begin with rules—they began with evidence about secondhand smoke, paired with visible advocacy, public campaigns, and growing public disgust. Policy followed moral clarity.
- Seatbelt use was resisted for years, seen as unnecessary or controlling. It took legal mandates, advertising campaigns, and social modelling to make buckling up automatic.
- Drunk driving became shameful through victim advocacy, sustained media pressure, and legal consequences. The cultural frame shifted from “everyone does it” to “you’ll kill someone.”
- Plastic bans, gendered assumptions, bullying policies—all followed similar arcs: from normalization to contested to unthinkable.
These were not changes in information; they were changes in tolerance.
We know how institutional change happens. We’ve studied it for decades.
Changing a school culture—or any institutional culture—requires more than good intentions. But we don’t have to start from scratch. The research is there. We just have to apply it.
Frameworks like:
- Prochaska and DiClemente’s Stages of Change show that people move from not even seeing a problem (“precontemplation”), to considering it, preparing for action, and finally maintaining new behaviour. We need strategies that meet educators at each of those stages—not just punish them once the harm is done. Learn more
- Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations explains how change spreads: not all at once, but through early adopters who model new norms until even the late adopters fall in line. In schools, this means targeting trusted educators and administrators who can model what dignity-first discipline looks like. Learn more
- Kotter’s 8 Steps for Leading Change emphasises urgency, coalitions, vision, communication, barrier removal, short-term wins, and anchoring new norms in institutional memory. This is especially critical in public systems that rely on precedent and internal loyalty. Learn more
- BJ Fogg’s Behaviour Model reminds us that even small behaviour changes need motivation, ability, and a clear prompt. Teachers don’t just need to want to stop punishing kids unfairly—they need better alternatives, training, and support to act differently under stress. Learn more
Change is possible. But only if it’s led.
What does this have to do with collective punishment?
Everything.
Right now in BC, it is still culturally acceptable for teachers to punish entire classes when one child breaks a rule. It is still common to deny recess, cancel field trips, remove cherished activities, or issue public reprimands based on group behaviour.
These actions violate the BC Human Rights Code when they target disabled students—but even beyond that, they are pedagogically unsound, psychologically harmful, and ethically indefensible. They punish the innocent, reinforce peer hostility, and communicate that adults value compliance more than fairness.
And yet—when families complain, they’re often dismissed. Told “that’s just how it is.” Or that “we all did it and turned out fine.” Or worse, that they’re being difficult.
That’s how culture sustains harm: by rendering it invisible.
We want to make it unthinkable.
Just like we no longer tolerate indoor smoking, we want a future where collective punishment is not argued over—it’s instinctively rejected. A future where:
- Teachers wouldn’t dare punish a group for the actions of one student, because they know it’s reputationally dangerous.
- Principals respond immediately, because they understand that collective punishment is a liability and a moral failure.
- Students learn that their individual dignity is protected, even in group settings.
- Parents file complaints not as a desperate last resort, but as a routine act of public care—and those complaints lead to structural response.
That doesn’t happen on its own. It happens when cultural clarity meets visible enforcement.
We need to:
- Educate the public and the profession about the harms of collective punishment.
- Expose incidents when they happen, especially when they’re routine.
- Equip teachers with alternatives—and hold them accountable when they fall short.
- Elevate the moral conversation about what children deserve.
- Ensure that school leaders know their inaction will be documented and made public.
Culture changes when we decide to change it
The arc of justice doesn’t bend itself. It is bent—by parents who file complaints, by students who speak up, by allies who refuse to look away, by journalists who ask better questions, by policymakers who rewrite the rules, and by institutions that are forced—finally—to respond.
We don’t have to wait for some future generation to realise collective punishment was wrong. We are that generation.
Let’s act like it.
End collective punishment in BC schools
No child should be punished for another’s behaviour.
Children know from a very young age that this is wrong.
We call on the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care to end collective punishment in BC Schools.
