Punishment or Consequence?

Every school must has their own rules to manage and restrict their students' behaviors. The rules are created solely to protect students from bad things and to create individuals who are able to live discipline in the future. Unfortunately, students do not realize about it and they even break the rules that have been made without feeling​​ guilty. To solve this problem, eventually schools create "punishment" as a means to give a deterrent effect to the students who break the school's rules. It is also intended to make students able to obey the rules that have been created by the school well.

Discussing about punishment, there are two types of punishment which are positive and negative punishment. Positive punishment  is what we consider classical punishment and is used in order to extinguish a bad behavior, whereas negative punishment again, is a tricky concept and would seem to be what positive punishment is; but it is not. Negative punishment is also known as punishment by removal, because a right or privilege is removed (Roach, 2010). Punishment can be effective in some case, you probably think of a few example of when punishment does not reduce a behavior in the classroom. The following is an example when punishment does not work well to manage students' behavior:

"Richard has not finished his home work yet. It was because he fell asleep last night. His teacher was angry and gave him punishment because of that. Then he was asked to run around the field. After completing the punishment given by his teacher, he had to wait outside the classroom until the class is finished. Richard felt tired at that time and thought to do not repeat the same mistake on the next meeting. As time goes by, in fact Richard kept repeating the same mistakes, because he thought that running around the field and staying outside the classroom was easier and better than working very hard to do their homework from the teacher."

From the case above we can infer that punishment given by the teacher does not give student a lesson. It only gives temporary effect. Why is it that punishment seems to work in some instances, but not in others? Researchers have found a number of factors that contribute to how effective punishment is in different situations. First, punishment is more likely to lead to a reduction in behavior if it immediately follows the behavior. Second, punishment achieves greater results when it is consistently applied. It can be difficult to administer a punishment every single time a behavior occurs. Punishment also has some notable drawbacks. First, any behavior changes that result from punishment are often temporary. "Punished behavior is likely to reappear after the punitive consequences are withdrawn," Skinner explained in his book About Behaviorism. 

Realizing that punishment is sometimes not really effective to be applied because it could not give a lesson for students, some school try to change "punishment" into "consequence". So, what are the difference between punishment and consequence?. I will give you two examples to help you differentiate it easily.

Case 1:

"Rina knew that the schedule of the school bus stopped at the shelter to pick up students was at 7:00 pm. One day Nina woke up late, so she arrived at the shelter at 7:05 pm. As a consequence Nina had missed the bus and was coming late to school. Finally, Nina tried to get up early so as not to miss the shuttle bus again because she did not want to leave by the bus again."

Case 2:

"Rina knew that the schedule of the school bus stopped at shelter to pick up students at 7:00 pm. One day Nina woke up late, so she arrived at the shelter at 7:15 pm. Bus driver have been waiting for Nina for 15 minutes. Then he scolded her because Nina came late. When Nina got into the bus,her friends also yelled and taunted her. Nina felt ashamed, sad, and guilty because have been making other people wait  for her and came late because of her mistake. "

From those two cases above, it can be seen that on the first case Rina could learn something from the situation she was facing which is "Don't be late or the bus will leave you". It is different with the second case where Rina felt that there was a refusal from her friends when she came late and also a form of mental abuse did by the bus driver by yelling at and scolding her. The second situation cannot guarantee that Rina will not come late on the following day. Therefore, we can conclude that the first case is an example of consequence and the second case is an example of punishment. Consequences teach, are given with empathy, relate directly to the actual behavior, and teach students to take responsibility for their own choices. Isn't this what we all want?! That's what I'm striving for daily, although I must confess that I often miss the mark. Hopefully, I'm not the only one :). Whereas, Punishments are about controlling behavior and are often arbitrary. They leave students feeling helpless and focus on the actual punishment rather than the student's choices.

So, after reading this post, when you find you students break the school rules, which one would you choose as a good teacher ? giving students punishment or consequence?