Talk:School discipline

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[edit] Old talk

This article is a piece of advocacy for a specific viewpoint, and needs to be edited to the Wikipedia NPOV style, which avoids advocacy in favour of reportage. -- The Anome 02:21, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've added the NPOV tag because the Methods... section is nothing more than advice. This is very unencyclopedic. An article on school discipline should discuss the history of discipline in school, the concept of in loco parentis, current challenges in urban centers, and school discipline in various parts of the world. It should not be a how-to lesson on behavior modification. Fifty or a hundred years ago an article written with this POV would be appalling to us today. --Tysto 18:03, 2005 May 27 (UTC)

"A much-redacted version of the article could possibly be included in one of the many possible articles about contemporary American education. As much space would be given to above-presented point of view as to opposing view. GCW"

I note that an editor has tagged part of this article as being a copyright violation. This text is from a public domain ERIC Digest and is in the public domain. See index/abtERICDig.html for details.

[edit] Demerit system

Pensacola Christian College is known for its unusually strict discipline, even among bible colleges. It is based on a demerit system. I'd hoped to link to this or another article for an explanation of a demerit system, but no luck. Is that so universally known that it doens't merit inclusion? If not, can any editors contribute some info? Thanks, -Willmcw 06:27, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

Willmcw, I'm not if you are still around, but I only read your post today and I would like to add information on demerit systems. It is used in a vast majority of schools in Hong Kong, Taiwana nd mainland China, and the Chinese-speaking parts in Southeast Asia, which leads me to wonder if it is a post-Qing Chinese practice, or an early Chinese adaptation of American military school practice?
I added the following in the article Education of Hong Kong over the past couple of days:

:Schools in Hong Kong typically have strict codes of discipline. Practically all school students in Hong Kong wear uniforms, and it is also common to witness severe restrictions on dress codes, student behaviours, and what items not directly related to school studies students can bring to schools and schools are entitled to search a student's belongings without giving out any rationales to students. An overwhelming majority of schools employ demerit systems (Chinese: 記缺點制度) as a formal record of student offences in disciplinary areas, and these statistics will appear in a student's school report each term and his or her testimonial when he or she leaves school. [A typical example of such is at Shatin Tsung Tsin Secondary School http://www.sttss.edu.hk/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=312] Most schools will record demerit points (Chinese: 記缺點) as the most basic unit of offence, and three demerit points accrue a minor offence (Chinese: 記小過) while three minor offences accrue one major offence (Chinese: 記大過). Once a student has accrued three or more major offences, he or she is automatically suspended (if he or she is undergoing compulsory education) or expelled from the school.

:There is a large discrepancy as to what behaviours will accrue demerit points between different schools. Some, such as stealing, consistently late for school, serious assault, or joining triad as a member, are universally accepted, while some others, such as harmless school pranks like hiding all chalks in a classroom before a teacher arrives, taking your own mobile telephone to school, leaving some of your own belongings at the school desk at the end of school day, or taking your home's power bills to school (in order to make payments on the way home) and thus technically a "bringing items not related to schoolwork to school", are contentious and many schools do not accept these as valid rationales for accruing demerit points. There are also claims by certain school students that some schoolteachers abuse their powers of giving out demerit points, in incidents such as a student who has accrued a demerit point on a controversial basis and appealing her case to the school's Board of Management has earned additional demerit points on fuzzy grounds as retributions from the teachers concerned [1]) . Because of this, some students and graduates who come from schools with famously strict school rules, such as the Carmel Pak U Secondary School, semi-jokingly refer to graduation as release from the prison (standard Chinese: 出獄; Cantonese slang: 出冊). Currently, the Education and Manpower Bureau is powerless against teachers abusing their powers at individual schools on this area as is not technically an illegal act, however unethical it is.

:It is claimed by some in Hong Kong the presence of demerit points and/or offences on a student's report could jeopardise his or her future career prospects after he or she graduates [2]. Heresay in Hong Kong society mentions bizarre cases, by Western standards, of university bachelor degree graduate applicants to certain Hong Kong government Administrative Officer (AO) positions or major corporations jobs being required to submit their primary and secondary school records dating more than a decade ago [3], and it is rumoured some candidates with university bachelor degrees did not receive job offers, despite extremely qualified otherwise, on the grounds of demerit points accrued during his junior secondary and/or primary school days. In a majority of cases, however, most employers do not bother to look at the demerit points in a tertiary-degree holding applicant's secondary/primary school records because most of these occurred in more distant past relative to his or her university studies and thus of little value. It is interesting to note a number of school teachers themselves did not have entirely clean disciplinary records during their own student days either, and this fact did not prevent them to become the next crop of teachers [4].

Which could be of help to you. --JNZ 05:52, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Revised version

I've removed the most glaring POV material and, though I still think the article needs a good deal more work, I think that it's now a reasonable starting point.

[edit] References

I think it's alright to move the references tag, The article does have three references, after all... Sr13 08:10, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More revision

I have tried to remove the tone of grievance and disenchantment where possible, and to rectify grammatical clumsiness and cases where US English and UK English spelling occur adjacently. I have tried to neutralise some of the ire I encountered too, without making it anodyne and bland. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Trevor H. (talk • contribs) 18:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC).