Of course, there are several other questions behind this question: Who confiscated the teacher's "disciplinary power"? Who will decide whether the disciplinary power is reasonable? How to operate is "reasonable"?
It happened that there was an article circulating in a circle of friends recently, the content of which was: A teacher surnamed He in Zhuzhou, Hunan Province was arrested by a policeman's father and put in an interrogation room for seven hours for punishing a junior three student who was a few minutes late.
Then my friend Cai Chaoyang wrote an article: Deputy Director Zhao is a good student in He Laoshi. The unique perspective of this article made it spread quickly, and also triggered a war of words between teachers.
One view is that education is not everything, and there is no education without punishment; Another view is that punishment is the failure of education and also shows the incompetence of educators. Both views have their own theoretical and practical basis.
The difficulty of education lies in the entanglement between the concept world and the experience world, and in the difficulty of practice, because education faces a specific and unique person. The beauty of ideal law can hardly replace the embarrassment and cruelty of real law. Teachers often have to choose between the law of reality and the law of conscience, and the law of conscience is always the first concession, which is the result of reality.
An educator once said: education is like intoxicating, but it will fall in the east and west. This is exactly the case: the truth in the world often encounters a dilemma, which brings the dilemma risk and uncertainty of the result, and also challenges the action wisdom of educators, especially the education profession, in the current characteristic environment, which really makes teachers tremble, stand or kneel, and often don't know what to do.
Some people say, "A strict teacher makes a good apprentice." In fact, a strict teacher is a slave, a strict teacher is a thug, and a slave and a thug often turn against each other. Slaves are the product of slavery and brainwashing, and thugs are also the product of barbaric education.
Someone said, "Education without love is like a pond without water." Love is an ability. Long-term hate education can easily make a group lose this ability. Under the authoritarian gene, it is easy to use "love" instead of "control" full of toxins and do "non-love" things in the name of "love". Besides, it is not enough to have love in education, but also to have wisdom, otherwise you can just give your children to grandma. Why come to school?
I am willing to seek reconciliation between the above two views on whether education should have "disciplinary power".
First of all, I admit that education without punishment must not be a complete education, because education is not everything. Facing the cunning and complicated changes of human nature, education is often powerless or even useless.
The problem lies in "the source of disciplinary power" and "the measurement of disciplinary scale".
The unified requirement of "discipline and rules" in schools is conducive to organizing the unified order of the collective, so that individuals can understand the rules of the collective and need to sacrifice their freedom. However, the unified requirements may not take into account the actual needs of each student. For example, have you considered the traffic problems of students who are far away from school or the needs of students in sudden special circumstances?
If you are late for a minute or two, you will be punished, even for a few classes or even half a day; If a student makes a mistake in a poem, he must copy the whole poem 100 times. Students who check their mobile phones in class will be confiscated and smashed ... I think this is against humanity and the law of education. This severe punishment for losing warmth (education can also have happiness punishment, which lies in teachers' understanding of education and human nature and the improvement of educational wisdom) will not only bring fear to the group, but also easily kill personality and leave a legacy that can be abused by rights in later life.
Strict education is a kind of education that needs vigilance, because it can easily become "castration" education. Education is to make people bigger and stronger, not smaller and better. Teachers regard themselves as "gardeners", and it is easy to forget that students are human beings, and it is also easy to forget common sense: teachers are human beings first, and then teachers.
In fact, individuals die collectively. The unified slavery of collectivism is at the expense of individuality, freedom and even moral conscience.
Secondly, is the school's punishment, whether it's standing penalty or labor, a punishment method through democratic consultation between the parents' committee and the school? Have students been informed and recognized as a "contract" that everyone should abide by, rather than a "king's law" unilaterally and vertically implemented by schools or classes?
Thirdly, students' small mistakes have a problem of discretion, such as being a few minutes late (in fact, it's no big deal), standing for a few minutes, dozens of minutes or hours, because teachers' power is also a kind of public power, and any unconstrained public power has a bad habit of self-extension, which will become a tool for evil.
Punishment is the last means of education, and it is also the external need to achieve the goal quickly. Not the needs of children, but the needs of educators.
Educators have the legal and reasonable right to punish, but they should not use it or use it as little as possible, because punishment has sequelae. Infinitely admitting that "education cannot be punished, otherwise it is not education" is a logical extension of infinitely believing that "human nature is good", just as "there are no students who can't teach well, only teachers who can't teach well" is as unreliable.
In fact, "human nature is good" is just an educational hypothesis. People have "original sin", and the source of human nature has been polluted by "sin" People's free will brings about people's constant depravity and will inevitably do evil without limit. Teachers and students are the same.
We find that some children are born with "bad", that is, "bad" in their genes. Some children are carriers of parents' bad habits or bad values, and persuasion and education alone can do nothing. When they make trouble without reason, some kind of punishment is an inevitable choice.
Mr. Zhang Wenzhi said: "Education is a slow art." Education is also the art of punishment. If we can't correct some students' bad habits in time, it will easily lead to problems retrogression and even become their character and destiny. Some bad behaviors and habits are sometimes difficult to persuade and correct. We can't fully admit that some children's "bad" is innocent, coming from the acquired environment, not inherent in the genes.
There are "little villains" among the students. Their spiritual quality and behavior habits are instigated by the devil or abused by free will, and they often want to do bad things and deliberately violate discipline in order to find a sense of existence. If educators don't treat it, it will easily lead students to bring "evil" into society and endanger others.
Of course, any punishment should try to return to students' hearts, so that students can understand the purpose and significance of punishment, because the best education must be self-education, otherwise punishment will only aggravate children's inner hatred and run counter to educational logic.
The problem is that since we understand this truth, schools or education authorities should formulate corresponding implementation rules. What can we do? What can't you do? What is the bottom line to keep? In countries with developed education, such as the United States, Japan, South Korea and Britain, we have to formulate operating rules, but we have to do nothing or indulge some "excellent" teachers. Teachers in the front line of basic education should not be confused between "management and no matter" and be pushed upside down by society, family, school and their own educational conscience.
In the absence of detailed implementation rules, it is common that once something goes wrong, the management authorities often do not carefully analyze right and wrong based on educational logic, safeguard educators' professional autonomy, and assume the social responsibility of the school, but adopt a method of minimizing major issues. The general handling procedure is often to fool parents first, and then suppress teachers, completely following the logic of interests rather than educational logic. This makes teachers who really want to do education daunting.
At present, teachers have become more and more risky occupations, and it is a natural choice for the best people not to engage in this profession and constantly flee.
Hu Shi once said that China culture is "goal-oriented" and "method-blind", but it can still be used to talk about China education. However, for the education of "lofty goals", there is no feasible path, only oppression and coercion, brainwashing, domestication and examination are left, which is really a great sorrow!