For the majority of my life, I have been perfectly fine with being a self-proclaimed goody-two shoes. 

I do what is asked of me, when it is asked of me and I find it harder to quip back a witty remark at a teacher than to simply sit down and accept defeat.

Despite this, I have still done about every act of penance in the book. Walk 10 laps around the courtyard. Pick up every piece of trash you see until the floor is spotless. Stay two minutes beyond the bell because someone happened to pack their bag a millisecond too early. 

Collective punishment, where the consequences are brought upon everyone instead of only the troublemaker, is to blame.

Teachers tend to turn toward using this form of discipline in the hopes that even their most problematic pupils will come around and develop some sense of moral responsibility, or that their class will eventually unify in fixing bad behavior.

But, how effective is this really?

To put it simply, it is not. As optimistic as teachers can be about the potential of their students to act right, making the entire class pay for the actions of a few serves the opposite of its intended purpose. 

Although this method of punishment is seen in schools nationwide, we have had our own run-ins with this sort of poetic injustice at Coppell High School. It has come in the form of the library being closed for two-thirds of all lunch periods or missing doors on the entrances to bathrooms across campus.

If you ask me, the many moments of awkward eye contact I make with students passing by as I wash my hands are enough to make me want to turn my long-standing reputation as a “pleasure to have in class” to a bona fide delinquent.

Furthermore, collective punishment divides more than it unifies. If a boss docked an entire office’s pay because of a lazy employee or if a police officer fined everyone on a highway lane for speeding because one driver decided to slam on the gas, it would be chaos.

If it would not work in the real world, it has no place to happen in our school. 

It is not just about the wrong people being punished, but that it guarantees no change in the future. The better alternative is to hold the right students accountable. Address the specific outliers that cause issues, and do not count in the majority. For a punishment to be effective, it needs to be fair and target the source of misbehavior. It is ridiculous to throw out the whole basket because of a few bad apples. 

Instead of relying on this outdated and ineffective approach to discipline, I implore administrators to prioritize fairness over convenience. Hand the repercussions to the right people, leaving the rest of us (and our lunch breaks) out of it.

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