Collective Punishment Basics
This series is a grounding place for families, educators, and allies who are just beginning to understand collective punishment in public education. It traces the patterns—denied recess, sticker charts, group consequences, IEP neglect, and more—and offers the language, analysis, and lived experience that reveal how these practices are structural, not isolated. These aren’t bad apples. They’re symptoms of a system that trades inclusion for order, and student dignity for adult control. This series will help you name what’s happening, know you’re not alone, and begin to respond with clarity, strategy, and care.
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Food, rewards, and collective punishment in the classroom
It might seem harmless. A teacher stands before a class with a box of lollipops or a bag of Freezies, offering them as a reward for good behaviour. But there’s a catch: everyone only gets one if everyone behaves. What appears—on the surface—as a treat, quickly becomes a threat. For neurodivergent children, food-based group rewards…
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Revoking recess as a form of collective punishment
Rules intended for safety become instruments of collective punishment when they erase unstructured play from the school day, compounding distress for children who rely on movement, predictability and sensory regulation. this post examines the disproportionate impact on neurodivergent learners and proposes targeted interventions that preserve every child’s right to play and learn.
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Trust undone: how collective punishment breaks the heart of the school
There is a kind of harm we don’t always name. Not bruises. Not bad grades. Not exclusion on paper. It is the slow unravelling of something more fragile—trust. The felt safety between a student and their teacher. The invisible thread between classmates. The quiet assumption that school is a place where fairness lives. Collective punishment…
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“I didn’t even do anything wrong”: student voices on collective punishment
Collective punishment in schools often silences individual experiences. Yet, platforms like Reddit provide a space where students share their stories candidly. Below are excerpts from various Reddit threads that illuminate the real-world effects of collective punishment.
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Collective punishment in schools: global history and harm
Explore the global history of collective punishment: how it has been defined, justified, resisted, and remembered across cultures and time.
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The history of collective punishment
Collective punishment emerged in a time when people were not understood as individuals, but as extensions of the family, the clan, the village. Responsibility was held in common. Honour was shared. So was shame. In such systems, if one person broke a social norm or committed a crime, the entire group was held accountable. Not…
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Collective punishment: a focal point of injustice
Collective punishment, the practice of disciplining a whole group for the misdeeds of one or a few, is widely recognised as unjust and counterproductive. Children know it’s wrong Even children intuitively grasp its unfairness. In one famous case, an 11-year-old student in the UK bluntly told her teacher that “collective punishment… is not fair on the…
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Collective punishment: unjust in schools, unjust everywhere
Collective punishment—punishing a group for the actions of an individual—is widely recognised as a violation of human rights. It is condemned in international law, yet it persists in various forms worldwide. From China’s persecution of human rights defenders’ families to Israel’s blockade of Gaza and the Taliban’s illogical governance, collective punishment disproportionately harms innocent people.…
