Public education in Canada is often conceptualised as a progressive force—an equaliser, a promise of inclusion. But beneath the surface of this narrative lies a long, often unbroken history of exclusion, coercion, and punishment.
Canadian schools have long been sites of control, where discipline was not merely corrective, but foundational to how institutions understood their purpose. To trace the history of punishment in Canadian education is to uncover how closely it has been tethered to colonialism, assimilation, and ableism.
Examples of Collective Punishment
Collective punishment has never been a neutral disciplinary tool. It is a technique of domination—used across centuries and continents to suppress resistance, enforce conformity, and strip communities of agency. From the Roman legions to Canadian residential schools, it has appeared in different forms but followed the same logic: when one person disobeys, all must suffer. This practice is not rooted in care. It is rooted in control.
1900s:
Colonial foundations and the project of assimilation
Systematic removal of children
From the mid-1800s onward, Canadian churches and government agents removed at least 150 000 Indigenous children from their families—using residential schools as tools of cultural punishment to erase entire communities’ identities theguardian.com.
Peer-enforced corporal punishment
in many rural one-room schools, teachers appointed older students to cane their younger classmates, transforming punishment into a ritual of peer coercion rather than individual accountability archives.oxfordcounty.ca.
Entire classes punished for one child’s offence
Archival records recall teachers caning whole classrooms under the doctrine of “spare the rod,” meting out pain collectively when only one child strayed from expected behaviour archives.oxfordcounty.ca.
The earliest Canadian schools were created not only to educate but to civilise. In the 19th century, church-and state-run residential schools became the primary mechanism for forcibly assimilating Indigenous children. Attendance was mandatory; resistance was punished. Speaking one’s language, practising one’s culture, or questioning authority could result in solitary confinement, beatings, public shaming, or withdrawal of food. These punishments were not isolated acts of cruelty but systematic tools of colonisation. As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada documented, they were designed to erase Indigenous identity and replace it with obedience to white, Christian norms.
This legacy continues to cast a long shadow. The values embedded in residential schools—conformity, silence, punishment of difference—were never fully expunged. Instead, they migrated into the norms of public schooling across the country.
Also see Reconciliation demands that we put collective punishment aside
20th century:
The era of corporal punishment
Canings are banned
Legal abolition of classroom canings in 1971 ended sanctioned corporal punishment under the Toronto Board of Education . No Longer a ‘Last Resort’: The End of Corporal Punishment in the Schools of Toronto
Recognition of prior harms
Recognition in the 1980s that group-based punitive practices degrade student dignity emerged when UNICEF and Canadian scholars declared collective sanctions incompatible with children’s rights. Are We “There” Yet?: A Comparative Analysis of
the Canadian Standards on the Corporal
Punishment of Children in Schools
Routine group detentions harm families
Whole classes were suspended or held after school in order to force parents to intervene, a practice shown to increase student alienation and absenteeism by 40 % (Opportunities suspended: the disparate impact of disciplinary exclusion from school) civilrightsproject.ucla.edu
For much of the 20th century, physical punishment was not only permitted in Canadian schools but encouraged. The strap, a thick piece of leather used to hit students on the hand, became a symbol of authority and fear. Teachers used it to enforce silence, obedience, and rote learning. Students could be strapped for everything from tardiness to perceived insolence. The rules were vague, and the power was absolute.
Corporal punishment was applied with particular force against racialised and disabled students, whose perceived deviance from white, able-bodied norms marked them as discipline problems. This was not accidental—it reflected broader social hierarchies encoded into school policy and practice.
Although corporal punishment was finally banned in Canadian public schools in 2004, many of its underlying logics persist. Control is still prioritised over curiosity. Compliance is still often seen as a precondition for care.
21st century:
The persistence of exclusion
Vague policy enabling class-wide sanctions under the BC School Act
The School Act’s broad mandate to “participate in an educational program as directed” has been interpreted to allow detention or suspension of entire classes for a single pupil’s conduct. canlii.org
Disproportionate exclusion of students with disabilities
Although fewer than 20 % of students have identified support needs, they account for over 30 % of all group suspensions and detentions in Canadian schools (Opportunities suspended: the disparate impact of disciplinary exclusion from school) civilrightsproject.ucla.edu
Routine group detentions harm families
Whole classes were suspended or held after school in order to force parents to intervene.
Even without the strap, Canadian schools continue to use exclusionary tactics as tools of discipline.
Students who struggle with attention, regulation, or social norms—especially those who are neurodivergent or come from marginalised communities—are disproportionately suspended, sent out of class, or denied participation in activities. Collective punishment is still widely used, despite having no evidentiary basis in pedagogy or justice.
Rather than addressing the root causes of dysregulation or disengagement, schools often fall back on group punishment: cancelling recess for everyone when one child acts out, refusing privileges to whole classes based on a few students’ behaviour, or excluding students from trips and teams as a form of discipline. These practices do not build accountability. They build resentment. They reinforce ableist narratives and create conditions where students feel alienated from their own learning.
A call for reckoning
If we are to build a truly inclusive public education system in Canada, we must confront this history—not just the overt violence of the past, but the subtler, still-sanctioned forms of punishment that shape school culture today. We must ask: who is being punished, for what, and to what end? And we must refuse the idea that discipline requires suffering.
Education should be a space of repair, not retribution. It should welcome difference, not pathologise it. Until schools are redesigned around these principles, punishment will remain not a side-effect but a structural feature of Canadian education.
The history is not behind us. It is with us still. And so is the choice to change it.
