Scotland Is Learning the Hard Way That Restorative Practices Are No Substitute for Rules
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses how Scotland's experiment with replacing discipline rules with restorative practices has produced predictably negative results.
Key Takeaways
- Scotland's experiment is failing - Replacing rules and consequences with restorative approaches has led to increased violence and teacher assaults
- This was predictable - Every jurisdiction that removes consequences sees the same results
- Rules and restorative practices aren't either/or - Schools need both clear rules with consequences and supportive restorative approaches
Transcript
Schools in Scotland are figuring out that when you don't have consequences for bad behavior, bad behavior increases.
And I read this article from a Scottish media outlet that said that violence is just off the charts.
The teachers are getting injured, classrooms are being disrupted under these policies that are called inclusion.
Now that's not the same kind of inclusion we have in the US where it's a special ed term.
Inclusion in Scotland refers to not removing a student from the classroom for any reason, not having detention, not having suspension, every kid staying in the classroom 100% of the time, no matter what they do.
And I think in any human situation, you have to have boundaries, right?
You can't say, unconditionally you get to be in this setting no matter what you do, because sometimes people do things that make the situation unsafe for everybody.
And this should have been predictable.
We should have been able to foresee that if we took away consequences, bad behavior would increase.
We should have been able to foresee that consequences actually do a very important job.
They're not mean, like consequences are not mean for kids.
Consequences create something that kids desperately need, which is boundaries and predictability about what's going to happen if they violate those boundaries.
And Scotland is finding out now, just as all over the English-speaking world, in England, in Australia, in the United States, in Canada, we're learning the hard way over and over that kids need those consequences and that kids need those rules.
And Educators have just been made to feel like ogres, like some sort of fascist bad guy for wanting rules and for pointing out that rules are absolutely critical to any kind of human gathering.
If you bring people together in a school, you have to have rules to keep them safe, and you have to be willing to exclude people when they violate those rules.
That's the essence of society, right?
The whole idea of society is that people are included on some conditional bases that make it possible for that society to be safe.
Because otherwise we just end up with like fight club, right?
Like we don't want to have a situation where the worst, most violent, most disruptive, most selfish behaviors are allowed to dominate because like that's what will happen.
As adults, we have to be willing to say we have rules here.
And if you violate those rules, you have consequences.
for a time.
So I hope Scotland is able to reel this in, to roll things back to a reasonable set of rules and consequences for schools and equip school authorities with the ability to exclude students from class when they are violent, when they are disruptive.
Because if we don't do that, if we're not willing to do that, we can't have education.
Let me know what you think.