The Mention of Detention
English 9, period 2. We were all hurrying into our places at our desks before the bell rang. My friend swore loudly and announced he had forgotten his homework.
“I am so getting a detention,” he said unhappily.
You see, if you forget your homework, come late to class, come unprepared to class, grab the wrong binder for that class, fail a test, speak out of turn, or goof off, you receive a mandatory one-hour invite to an after school detention. If you miss, skip or are unable to attend this detention, you receive a two-hour detention on Friday. If you fail to attend the Friday attention, you get a “quiet” detention on SATURDAY FROM 8 TO NOON. (That's four hours!!!) During quiet detention, you are not permitted to do homework, read, use your computer, get help for classes, do community service -- nothing. You just sit and contemplate your sins.
My friend sighed as he took his seat.
“They over-prescribe detention big-time here,” I said. I knew I shouldn't have said it, but I was frustrated and it just kind of slipped out. I had said it quietly, so no one had heard me, right? Wrong.
From across the classroom, my teacher called, "What did you say, Claire?”
I felt a shiver going down my spine: the game was up, she had heard my rude remark. Just two weeks into my first year of high school, and I was already making trouble for myself. But I couldn't back down now. So I took a deep breath and restated my remark in an even tone: "I said that they over-prescribe detentions here.”
My teacher just stared at me for a second, I didn't move. I wasn't sure whether she was going to laugh at me, or show me just how much they over-prescribe detentions, by putting me in one for the rest of my high school career! But she just said, “Why do you think that?”
I found myself pouring out my ideas and opinions about detention in a jumbled way, not as powerfully, perhaps, as I would have liked, but we were kind of shouting across the room, over the heads of my new friends.
I told her that I thought the threat of getting a detention instilled bad habits in students -- how maybe it taught us how to avoid detention, but not how to learn. I said I didn't think it was fair that freshmen, who were still learning how to cope with high school, were the ones for whom the "detention for everything” rule was passed, and how it seemed prison-like to make students sit for four hours doing nothing but letting their anger, boredom and frustration simmer.
My teacher then told me that two years ago (before the new “detention for everything” rule took effect) she'd had eighty freshmen in her English classes, and twenty of them had failed. She then explained that last year, after the detention of everything rule” was established, only three kids failed.
I wondered about this. I wondered whether or not it really meant anything in the long run. I said to my teacher (whom I like a lot and whose opinion I respect) maybe we'd have to see if the sophomores who had received so many detentions last year, as freshmen, for incomplete or lost homework would keep up their study habits now that they weren't living in fear of spending their Saturdays in school. I mentioned as a side note that I doubted they would. I doubted all those detentions really helped them be more engaged, better critical thinkers, gave them a feeling of excitement and enthusiasm as they entered school each morning. I doubted that detention made them want to be lifelong learners.
What I didn't say, but what I thought was: "If one quarter of your students failed your class, you failed one quarter of your students as a teacher. We want to learn, so please help us. Don't fail us. If we feel like failures, we lose confidence, and we don't learn as well as we could. We don't want to be punished for our effort, sometimes unsuccessful, to master the materials you are teaching. Please help us, don't fail us.”
Some of the best things in life can be enjoyed through failure. We learn from failure. But when we are late, or forget our homework, or flunk a test, and we are sent to detention, where is the learning? In my opinion, there isn't any real learning in terms of helping our minds grow and thrive. There's just failing -- failing to abide by rules, or failing to pass a test that we often don't see as worthwhile to begin with.
As a high school freshman, I don't see the connection between what we might get out of a stint in quiet detention and what we want to get out of our English class: a love of poetry, learning how to express ourselves in writing, appreciation of authors and their ideas. If we were sent to detention for things that mattered, there would be no detention. We don't need punishment to remind us to do the things we love.
Posted in Students on Nov 22, 2009 - 05:39 PM
Just so everyone knows, I will be blogging every two weeks. Usually on Sundays.English 9, period 2. We were all hurrying into our places at our desks before the bell rang. My friend swore loudly and announced he had forgotten his homework.
“I am so getting a detention,” he said unhappily.
You see, if you forget your homework, come late to class, come unprepared to class, grab the wrong binder for that class, fail a test, speak out of turn, or goof off, you receive a mandatory one-hour invite to an after school detention. If you miss, skip or are unable to attend this detention, you receive a two-hour detention on Friday. If you fail to attend the Friday attention, you get a “quiet” detention on SATURDAY FROM 8 TO NOON. (That's four hours!!!) During quiet detention, you are not permitted to do homework, read, use your computer, get help for classes, do community service -- nothing. You just sit and contemplate your sins.
My friend sighed as he took his seat.
“They over-prescribe detention big-time here,” I said. I knew I shouldn't have said it, but I was frustrated and it just kind of slipped out. I had said it quietly, so no one had heard me, right? Wrong.
From across the classroom, my teacher called, "What did you say, Claire?”
I felt a shiver going down my spine: the game was up, she had heard my rude remark. Just two weeks into my first year of high school, and I was already making trouble for myself. But I couldn't back down now. So I took a deep breath and restated my remark in an even tone: "I said that they over-prescribe detentions here.”
My teacher just stared at me for a second, I didn't move. I wasn't sure whether she was going to laugh at me, or show me just how much they over-prescribe detentions, by putting me in one for the rest of my high school career! But she just said, “Why do you think that?”
I found myself pouring out my ideas and opinions about detention in a jumbled way, not as powerfully, perhaps, as I would have liked, but we were kind of shouting across the room, over the heads of my new friends.
I told her that I thought the threat of getting a detention instilled bad habits in students -- how maybe it taught us how to avoid detention, but not how to learn. I said I didn't think it was fair that freshmen, who were still learning how to cope with high school, were the ones for whom the "detention for everything” rule was passed, and how it seemed prison-like to make students sit for four hours doing nothing but letting their anger, boredom and frustration simmer.
My teacher then told me that two years ago (before the new “detention for everything” rule took effect) she'd had eighty freshmen in her English classes, and twenty of them had failed. She then explained that last year, after the detention of everything rule” was established, only three kids failed.
I wondered about this. I wondered whether or not it really meant anything in the long run. I said to my teacher (whom I like a lot and whose opinion I respect) maybe we'd have to see if the sophomores who had received so many detentions last year, as freshmen, for incomplete or lost homework would keep up their study habits now that they weren't living in fear of spending their Saturdays in school. I mentioned as a side note that I doubted they would. I doubted all those detentions really helped them be more engaged, better critical thinkers, gave them a feeling of excitement and enthusiasm as they entered school each morning. I doubted that detention made them want to be lifelong learners.
What I didn't say, but what I thought was: "If one quarter of your students failed your class, you failed one quarter of your students as a teacher. We want to learn, so please help us. Don't fail us. If we feel like failures, we lose confidence, and we don't learn as well as we could. We don't want to be punished for our effort, sometimes unsuccessful, to master the materials you are teaching. Please help us, don't fail us.”
Some of the best things in life can be enjoyed through failure. We learn from failure. But when we are late, or forget our homework, or flunk a test, and we are sent to detention, where is the learning? In my opinion, there isn't any real learning in terms of helping our minds grow and thrive. There's just failing -- failing to abide by rules, or failing to pass a test that we often don't see as worthwhile to begin with.
As a high school freshman, I don't see the connection between what we might get out of a stint in quiet detention and what we want to get out of our English class: a love of poetry, learning how to express ourselves in writing, appreciation of authors and their ideas. If we were sent to detention for things that mattered, there would be no detention. We don't need punishment to remind us to do the things we love.
Tags for this entry:
k-12 education,
teacher-student roles,
bullying,
behavior and consequences,
failure,
punishment,
homework,
rules,
writing,
lifelong learning
Melia Dicker
Nov 22, 2009 - 08:15 PM
Wow. Your story brought me right back to those moments where a teacher spoke to me sharply and made my stomach drop to the floor.
Good for you for having the confidence to speak up and answer your teacher’s question honestly and in detail. You’re spot on with the reasons that “quiet detention” doesn’t help students learn anything meaningful, much less nurture their joy of learning. It’s like a time-out for the child who doesn’t sit and think about his wrongdoings, but rather about how he’s going to get even when he’s big and powerful.
It’s not like the teacher—or the poor sap who has to supervise—wants to come in for four hours on a Saturday morning, either. That just leads to resentment on both sides.