On moral injury and collective punishment

I did not want to file a complaint. I still don’t—not in the sense that people imagine, with anger or vengeance or a desire for punishment. What I wanted, what I asked for again and again with patience and clarity and increasing despair, was for the district to acknowledge that collective punishment is not just ineffective but unjust; to say, plainly and without qualification, that denying an entire class recess or opportunities because of one child’s behaviour is wrong—legally, ethically, and pedagogically. I wanted them to name it, to reject it, and to forbid it outright. That would have been enough.

But they didn’t.

Instead, they deferred responsibility, gesturing vaguely toward school autonomy, hinting that each situation is different, suggesting that perhaps the rules are unclear or that harm is difficult to assess. They repeatedly refused to examine the impact of what had been done—not just to my child, who bore the weight of being visibly dysregulated, but to every child in the room who learned, quietly and deeply, that one person’s distress could make everyone else suffer.

And so I was left with a devastating choice: to speak out, knowing that it would be interpreted as personal, vindictive, or emotional, or to stay silent and watch it happen again. To protect one teacher’s reputation, or to protect my child’s dignity. To swallow the discomfort of institutions that refuse to be called to account, or to risk everything in the name of something I had hoped we all agreed on: that children deserve justice.

This, in its essence, is what moral injury feels like. And I am not the only one carrying it.

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What is moral injury—and why does it matter in schools?

Moral injury is the wound left behind when we are forced to act against our conscience—or when we witness harm we are powerless to prevent, justify, or repair. It was first studied in military contexts, where soldiers faced situations that shattered their sense of right and wrong, but it is now increasingly recognised in civilian professions where ethical obligations collide with structural constraints: healthcare, social work, law enforcement, and education.

In schools, moral injury is often misnamed or misdiagnosed. It is buried beneath the language of burnout, mistaken for compassion fatigue, or dismissed altogether as a lack of resilience. But it is none of these things. It is not just the cost of caring too much—it is the spiritual and psychological fracture that occurs when one’s deepest values are violated by the very structures that claim to uphold them.

It is not just about being tired. It is about being torn.

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Moral traps and systemic failure

Educators regularly encounter what researchers call moral traps: impossible situations where every available option involves the betrayal of something essential. A teacher may believe, sincerely and with integrity, that every child deserves to be included, supported, and seen in their wholeness. But that same teacher may be required—explicitly or implicitly—to exclude a child in distress, to enforce silence when one student’s voice becomes disruptive, or to discipline a neurodivergent child in a way that directly contradicts what they know about trauma, behaviour, and disability.

These are not hypotheticals. They happen every day, in classrooms across the country, where policies and staffing and time make it impossible to be both kind and compliant.

Teachers do what they must to survive the day. And then they carry the weight of those decisions—sometimes with guilt, sometimes with defiance, sometimes with shame that has nowhere to go.

Not because they are cruel.
But because the system made it impossible to be good.

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Not just burnout—something deeper

Burnout is real. So is empathic strain. But moral injury cuts deeper—it is not about energy or motivation or even capacity; it is about identity, integrity, and the unbearable distance between who we are and what we are forced to become.

It is the feeling of watching a child cry in the hallway and doing nothing—not because you don’t care, but because you cannot leave your classroom unattended. It is the sting of shaming a student for interrupting, even when you know in your bones that the interruption was a bid for connection, not defiance. It is the moment you say, “We all need to move forward,” while knowing one child cannot—and still, you move forward anyway.

Moral injury is what remains when you no longer recognise the educator you hoped you would become.

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What healing looks like—for real

Healing from moral injury does not happen through yoga classes or gratitude journals or staff appreciation lunches. It happens through truth-telling. Through spaces that allow for honesty without fear of reprisal. Through action that realigns our behaviour with our values—not just personally, but structurally, collectively, and with care.

For educators, that means:

• Making room to acknowledge and validate moral distress without framing it as failure or fragility
• Creating time and support to act in ways that feel consistent with one’s professional and ethical commitments
• Building communities of compassionate solidarity where teachers can reflect, grieve, and hold one another accountable with love
• Recognising that mental and physical care are not luxuries, but essential conditions for ethical work

For the system, it means this:

• Smaller class sizes and adequate staffing to allow educators to lead with care, not control
• Access to trauma-informed resources that do not require personal sacrifice to implement
• Leadership that defends the integrity of its teachers rather than preserving the optics of compliance
• Clear, enforced policy that explicitly forbids collective punishment in all its forms
• Ongoing training that reframes discipline as relational repair, not retribution

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We don’t need to choose between protecting teachers and protecting children. We only need to stop pretending the harm is individual.

I filed that complaint not to punish a teacher, but because I could not pretend that what happened was acceptable. I filed it not to create a scapegoat, but to name a pattern—one that harms not just children, but the adults who teach them. I filed it because I was not willing to collude in silence. Because I could not live with myself if I let it happen to someone else.

I carry the weight of that choice. Educators carry the weight of theirs. And our children carry them both.

We cannot build safety—or learning, or trust—on foundations of shame and silence and moral betrayal. We have to choose—together—to build something better.