Teachers in schools and parents in homes use punishment as one of the most important tools for controlling student behavior and discipline. In psychological terms, punishment is defined as anything that reduces the occurrence of a behavior; physical pain, withdrawal of attention, loss of tangible things or activities, reprimand, or even something that others would consider a reward, but the individual does not like One of the main goals of punishment is to create fear in the student so that the behavior does not occur again. Some drawbacks of punishment as a behavior control technique are:
Punishment can lead to counter-aggression
Unfortunately, defiant behavior tends to attract the overuse of aversive techniques, that is, the too frequent use of punitive consequences to stop the behavior. Experts explains that spanking, yelling, and other aversive methods may seem to work in the short term, but they don't stop oppositional behavior in the long term, which often leads to increased problems. This is because one of the side effects of the constant use of punishment is counter-aggression. “So, if you use punishment on a child, guess what that child will do? Counter-aggression. In return, they will be oppositional," explained by experts. “And excessive punishment can train oppositional and even aggressive behavior. It teaches the child how to punish.'
Punishment can lead to avoidance
What can also happen with punishment is that your child may start engaging in escape or avoidance behaviors. “Just think of someone you don't like. When you know they're going to be in a specific place, you can avoid that place," says phycologists says “You see them walking down the hall, you turn the other way to escape them. Or if you're talking to them, you try to leave the conversation as soon as possible."
Punishment can lead to emotional dysregulation
Punishment has other side effects in addition to avoidance and counter-aggression. One of them is emotional dysregulation. In other words, punishment can result in both parties becoming upset, angry, unhappy, and even emotionally distant or estranged from each other.
Punishment can lead to self-doubt
Another negative side effect of continued punishment is that it can reduce what you might call self-efficacy. It reduces your child's ability to continue to act effectively. "Some people call it self-esteem," explained by experts. “But it's really about a lot more than self-esteem, because not only does it make you feel bad about yourself, but basically what you're really talking about is that you don't want to do or engage in other more successful behaviors. The chronic use of punishment makes one doubt one's own ability to make a difference.”
In general, punishment at educational institute appears to be an ineffective, dangerous, and unacceptable method of controlling and maintaining behavior and discipline, as it has negative rather than positive consequences in the entire teaching and learning process. Physical punishment (corporal) punishment appears to increase children's aggression, increase antisocial behavior, decrease intellectual performance, increase poor parent/teacher, student relationship quality, and cause mental health problems. Since punishments tend to dehumanize children and make them feel shameful, ashamed, and worthless during the learning and teaching process, it is better to eliminate them both in homes and schools to improve positive learning. It should also be repealed as it interferes with students' right to be treated with dignity and consequently interferes with their right to a quality education. However, if a teacher or parent feels that it is necessary to use punishment, they should focus on important advice (guidelines) to be effective in changing the behavior of students. Still, more efforts need to be made to educate parents and teachers about the implications of corporal punishment as well as the alternatives available to them. It is important to note that good school discipline depends not only on non-violent responses to student misbehavior, but also on qualified and properly trained teachers.
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