Collective Punishment
Collective punishment refers to the disciplinary practice of penalising a group for the actions of one or a few individuals—often enacted in classrooms as withheld privileges, cancelled activities, or public reprimands directed at entire cohorts. Though rarely named in policy, it remains a common method of behaviour management in Canadian schools. This tag interrogates collective punishment as both a pedagogical failure and a moral harm, tracing its psychological, legal, and systemic dimensions. It includes student testimonies, parent advocacy, policy critiques, and international parallels—connecting the emotional toll of everyday discipline to deeper questions of justice, accountability, and the ethical use of power in education.
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Recent BCHRT decisions expose systemic failures
After reading through a couple of of the recent BC Human Rights Tribunal findings, here are some thoughts: Ongoing delays erode trust Several rulings show how procedural deadlines and scheduling gaps thwart families seeking essential supports. In one decision the Tribunal dismissed parents’ allegations about inadequate consultation and discontinued specialist services because the events in 2017 and 2018 fell…
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Teacher speaks out on exclusion
An experienced teacher alleges that her school punished her for exposing how it pushes vulnerable students out of class. She claims administrators send students with disabilities home early, force them onto reduced schedules, and isolate them without formal suspension or notifying families. She says that when she reported those illegal, unethical practices, administrators investigated her,…
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The slow boil: delayed support and collective punishment
I think a lot about lobsters, wrestled from the sea and placed in cold water that slowly heats—do they wonder if it’s getting hot in there? How do they decide where the line is and begin to panic? Is it a thought or pure instinct? In kindergarten, my son arrived with a history of trauma…
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Few of us remain our best selves in a room starved of air
If you are a parent of a neurodivergent child, you can recite the script before the phone even buzzes. “[Child] had a very good day and really showed leadership with the younger kids” Pause. “But in the afternoon [Child] had some unexpected behaviour. [Child] is waiting at the office.” Praise is meant to help us feel that…
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The days my children cried, and I told them it would be okay
When your trust has already been broken—by people who were supposed to care for you, protect you, believe you—every new betrayal lands like confirmation. I didn’t come to school meetings as a blank slate. I came with a trauma history. So when they dismissed my child’s needs, ignored the signs, or punished their distress, it…
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The problem with the appeals process
When something goes wrong at school—when a child is excluded, harmed, or unsupported—families are told to “work it out with the school first.” That sounds reasonable on paper. But in practice, it’s vague, unstructured, and often retraumatising. I’ve gone through the Vancouver School Board (VSB) appeals process more times that I’d wish upon anyone. Here’s…
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When school discipline undermines trust at home
There’s a problem in our schools. You’ll see it on a child’s face when they come home. You’ll hear it in the way they describe something that left them feeling humiliated, angry, or confused—and often, all three at once. It happens when school staff use discipline strategies that completely contradict the values a student has…
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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…
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School District 48 (Sea to Sky): a neurodiversity-informed policy critique
SD48 conduct decision flow (simplified) ⚠️ Critical analysis ✅ Strengths ❌ Gaps Neurodiversity lens: how the policy holds up Dimension Assessment Notes Disability justice ✅ Partial Equity and accommodation are mandated, but process and supports unspecified Neurodivergent alignment ⚠️ Weak No mention of executive function needs, sensory regulation, impulsivity, masking, or meltdown management Protection from…
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SJ Burnside Continuing Education (SD61): a neurodiversity‑informed policy critique
SJ Burnside Education Centre is an Alternative Education program serving youth aged 13–18 in a small-group, flexible setting. Its published Code of Conduct emphasises high standards of conduct, honesty, integrity, and cooperation during all school-sponsored activities. It explicitly promotes peaceful problem-solving, community engagement, and maintains a personal device policy (e.g., cell phones may be removed if abused). Student Code of Conduct SJ Burnside conduct decision…
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Rot at the root: Why POPARD must be dismantled from the top down
When I first objected to the strategies POPARD proposed, I tried—truly—to assume good intent: that if I just gave them the right information, the clearest language, the most generous interpretation of their mandate, they would course-correct and stop pushing reward charts onto an already-traumatised child. I wrote careful emails, cited the psychologist’s diagnosis, offered specific…
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Reconciliation demands that we put collective punishment aside
Collective punishment in residential schools did more than punish children—it shattered the bonds between parents and children. For many parents who survived, the fear, shame, and trauma they endured complicated their ability to nurture trust in their own parenting. Emotional disconnection and disrupted parenting Adults who attended residential schools often struggle to form secure attachments…
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Support is a bridge
What happens when schools pretend the bridge is whole. The appearance of help “She gets check-ins from the area counsellor once a week.”“We’ve made sure the classroom teacher is aware of her IEP.”“We’re doing everything we can within the current resources.” These are the phrases they recite—softly, professionally, as though reassurance were a substitute for…
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Data tracking in the residential school system
The Canadian Residential School system (circa 1870s–1990s) was a network of church-run boarding schools funded by the government to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children. In theory, such a large system might have been guided by careful data collection – tracking student health, education outcomes, and well-being. In reality, government officials prioritized ideological goals and cost-saving “optics” over…
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The space between my brain and the page
My parents never sent me to kindergarten, so when I started first grade, it was a bit mysterious to me. I had been living on the side of a mountain, chasing garter snakes, and picking wild strawberries. While the class attempted to learn the alphabet, my parents had already been reading chapter books to me…
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A perspective taking primer for educators
Perspective taking is the disciplined art of stepping outside one’s own cognitive scaffolding and entering, as fully as possible, into the sensorium of another person. It is not sympathy, which radiates concern from a safe emotional distance, nor is it projection, which mistakes one’s own feelings for universal truth. Instead, it is an intentional, methodical…
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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.…
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The stories we carry: how schoolyard legends and classroom fear shape us
When I was in grade three, I attended an alternative school that felt like a sun-dappled meadow. We painted. We played outside. We had a math teacher who made learning feel like a game, not a test. There was room to breathe. I remember it as freedom. Then, in grade four, everything changed. My new…
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Calling the exclusion line
Every morning, when we dial the school’s sick line, we enact a ritual that ought to acknowledge more than a fever or a stomach ache. In theory, this system exists to safeguard children who cannot attend school due to illness. In practice, it masks the institutional harms that shape our decisions, erasing critical context from…
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How regressive school policies limit inclusion
On the first day of school, it all looked so promising that it seemed almost too good to be true—the hallway bulletin boards overflowed with vibrant slogans about kindness, leadership, and community belonging, while the principal’s welcome message spoke in glowing terms about student voice, shared responsibility, and the promise of a positive school culture…