Group Punishment
Group punishment in schools refers to the practice of penalising an entire class or cohort for the actions of one or a few students. Though often framed as a behavioural management tool, it undermines individual accountability and can foster resentment, injustice, and psychological harm. This tag explores the emotional impact, ethical questions, and legal ambiguity surrounding group punishment in Canadian public education.
-
Why we built the BC School Districts collective punishment database
When we began writing about collective punishment in schools, we searched for district policies—something public, something clear. What we found instead were Reddit threads and Facebook comments. And where formal documentation did exist, it was buried in long policy PDFs filled with abstract values—fairness, accountability, safe and caring schools—but almost nothing concrete about what happens…
-
“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.
-
Rethinking accessibility leadership, training, and labour in BC public education
In accessibility work, most transformative insights come directly from disabled people. Lived experience is primary data; manuals and metrics are, at best, secondary literature. In schools, teachers are experts in pedagogy, yet few are trained in disability or neurodivergence. That absence is not incidental—it is engineered, and the consequences are everywhere. The current failure—and promise—of…
-
Performative accessibility in British Columbia public education
Too often, accessibility in schools is performance, not practice. Symbolic gestures and endless buzzwords cannot replace the courage to name harm, take responsibility, and commit to structural change. Until then, access plans remain brochures—and inclusion a stage set.
-
Comparison of Provincial and Territorial rules on collective punishment in schools
Across Canada, policies on student discipline vary widely—but only one province, Nova Scotia, has taken the decisive step of explicitly banning collective punishment in schools. In April 2025, Nova Scotia revised its Provincial School Code of Conduct Policy to require individualised responses to student behaviour, affirming that group-based discipline is not just ineffective but unjust.…
-
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.
-
We did everything right, but we were failed
Introducing Robin’s story and the cost of manufactured scarcity In British Columbia, the promise of public education is being quietly dismantled. Not with headlines, not with declarations—but with slow erosion, strategic omission, and institutional neglect.
-
The ABCs of regressive punishment
Discipline in schools is rarely neutral. For neurodivergent students, it often takes the form of quiet harm—masked as structure, delivered as shame. From exclusion and forced apologies to behaviour charts and the denial of recess, regressive punishment practices remain embedded in our classrooms. They don’t teach accountability. They teach fear, isolation, and the high cost…
-
Petition to end collective punishment in BC Schools
Collective punishment in schools continues in British Columbia, where children are still punished for things they didn’t do—or because others near them did something wrong. Under international law, including Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions, collective punishment is prohibited. It is considered unjust in times of war. But in our schools, it continues under the…
-
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…
-
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…
-
When they call distress the baseline
When a principal told me, “his baseline is dysregulated,” I realised how far we had drifted from care. This was not a description. It was a dismissal. Distress had become so familiar in the classroom that it was no longer seen as a signal—but as who he was. But my child is not born of…
-
Nova Scotia bans collective punishment
Nova Scotia’s Provincial School Code of Conduct Policy underwent a significant update in April 2025, marking a substantial revision of the previous 2015 policy. The updated policy, set to take effect in September 2025, introduces clearer definitions of unacceptable behaviours, delineates new responsibilities for all school community members, and emphasises support for those affected by…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
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…
-
Collective punishment: it doesn’t work, but still it happens
Written by Dr Penny Rabiger, in 2016, this personal yet incisive piece, discusses the challenges the persistence of collective punishment in schools, despite its well-documented ineffectiveness. Drawing on both professional insight and a child’s perspective, the post illustrates how these tactics damage trust, inhibit learning, and punish children for behaviours beyond their control. The author…
-
What policy says about collective punishment in schools
Collective punishment is never explicitly mentioned in the School Act or BC education policies, but it is made very clear that the system is meant to be fair, accountable, and respectful. The School act states the discipline in schools must be “similar to that of a kind, firm and judicious parent” (Section 76(3)). I consider…
