In 1993, educator Martha Johnson conducted a simple but telling experiment. During a professional development session for principals and vice-principals in southern Alberta, she handed out a fictional case study: a student, suspended. Participants were asked to reflect on whether the decision was ethical—before and after being introduced to an ethical decision-making framework. What changed wasn’t the facts of the case, but how people reasoned through them. Their confidence shifted. So did their conclusions.
At first glance, Johnson’s study—Student Suspension: Understanding the Ethics Behind the Decision—seems like a procedural training exercise, a tidy contribution to the field of educational administration. But beneath its modest framing lies something profound: an effort to interrupt the routinisation of harm.
Because suspension is, in fact, harm.
It is the removal of a child from community. It is a decision that severs continuity, fractures trust, and tells a young person: you do not belong here right now. It is a declaration made not by peers but by authorities—people whose power is institutional, backed by policy and protected by legal shield. And in that moment, whether the act is brief or indefinite, the school has chosen social exclusion as a tool of behavioural control.
This study didn’t ask whether that exclusion was effective. It asked whether it was ethical.
Ethics as a gate, not a guardrail
Johnson used am framework that included:
- Identifying the problem,
- Considering stakeholders,
- Exploring alternatives,
- Making a morally defensible choice.
It’s a method that encourages reflection and slows the rush to punitive action. It’s the kind of structure many parents wish had been used when our children were removed from the classroom for talking out of turn, for resisting shame-based programs, for being overwhelmed in rooms without support.
But here’s the thing: ethical reasoning can only go so far when the framework itself is built inside a punitive system.
In Johnson’s study, many administrators initially justified suspension based on school order, policy precedent, or behavioural norms. After reflecting on ethical principles like justice and care, some changed their position. Others became more confident in their original stance. The ethics exercise didn’t dictate a “right” answer—it simply created space to reconsider it.
That’s both powerful and limited.
Because what happens when the “reasonable” choice is embedded in decades of ableism? What happens when policies allow seclusion, restraint, or mass punishment of children? What if the options educators are weighing are all variations of coercion, and the ethical frameworks they’re using have been trained to prioritise compliance over connection?
Then ethics, too, becomes a tool of institutional harm.
Collective punishment is not an ethical grey zone
At End Collective Punishment, we’ve read hundreds of school policies, tribunal rulings, and parent letters. We’ve traced the damage that happens when exclusion is normalised—not just for the “suspended” child but for their peers, their siblings, and their caregivers. And one thing becomes clear again and again:
You cannot teach safety by making children feel unsafe.
You cannot model dignity by humiliating a class.
You cannot build a learning community by turning it into a system of surveillance and threat.
Johnson’s study shows that ethical reasoning can change minds. It shows that when educators are invited to slow down and consider who is harmed, who is protected, and what other paths might exist, they sometimes choose differently.
But in cases of collective punishment, the choice is not a subtle one. It is not a matter of interpretation or ethical nuance. It is a practice that targets children en masse for the actions of a few. It is by definition unjust.
There is no ethical justification for making an entire class miss recess because one student was dysregulated. There is no moral defence for cancelling an event because a disabled child struggled with transitions. There is no reasoning process that can convert retaliation into care.
What educators deserve—and what children do
If you are an administrator, Johnson’s study offers a tool: a chance to strengthen your ethical muscles, to reflect more deeply before making a call that will shape a child’s relationship with learning. But if you are a child—particularly a disabled child, a racialised child, a child in care—there is no workshop to make your body safer in schools that treat harm as a management strategy.
That’s why we believe the conversation must go beyond ethical decision-making. We must ask: why is exclusion still an option at all? Why are we still building systems where removal is considered reasonable, and containment is called care?
Ethics can be part of reform. But only if we are willing to ask more radical questions. And only if we are willing to name, clearly and without compromise, that collective punishment is unethical—always.
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Collective punishment in Canadian schools
Across Canada, children are still being punished for the actions of others—recesses cancelled, field trips withheld, and classroom privileges revoked based on group behaviour. This practice, known as collective punishment, has no place in an inclusive, rights-based education system.
