The devastating impact of collective punishment

A small group of students broke into the gym at lunch to play.

They were rounded up by teachers and sent to the principal’s office. Each student was given the opportunity to apologise. One refused—because she was expected to apologise to a staff member who had previously caused her harm.

Later, the principal assembled the entire volleyball team. She announced that the game would be cancelled. If students could not follow the school’s conduct rules, she said, they could not represent the school at the game.

The names and images have been changed, and the story reflects the way a child remembers a traumatic incident.

Still, this story reflects more than one moment. It reveals the structural conditions that far too many neurodivergent students are forced to navigate—where support is withheld, needs are misread, and harm is justified as discipline.

Jean is not an outlier. She is not uniquely troubled, or unusually disruptive. She is a child with ADHD and a learning disability—bright, social, impulsive, and brave. She does not always understand instructions. She wants to be with her friends.

When children with executive function and impulse control differences are publicly humiliated, it does not teach fairness. It teaches fear. It teaches shame.

This is what collective punishment looks like.

It teaches children that their belonging is conditional. It tells disabled students that when they slip up, they will not only be punished, but publicly shamed. And it tells their classmates that inclusion is dangerous—that proximity to a neurodivergent peer puts them at risk.

This story is not unique.