The Function of School Discipline Is NOT Individual Behavior Change

What is the purpose of school discipline?

Is it to change student behavior?

Is it to prevent bad behavior from recurring?

I got this comment that asks, what is the function of discipline if not to prevent future behavior?

And I think that's a really, really good question and one that we very easily get mixed up on because of course we do want to improve students' behavior.

We want each student to be successful.

We want no students to be disruptive or violent.

We want every student to get a good education and we want to help the students who have the worst behavior.

But the purpose of school discipline, the function of school discipline is slightly different from that.

The purpose of school discipline is to protect the learning environment.

In order to keep everyone safe, in order to keep everyone focused, we have to put some things in place that not only strive to improve student behavior, but also...

are realistic about the possibility that we may not be able to that's why virtually every school uses a system called progressive discipline progressive discipline is the idea that when a student does something that's not okay there's a consequence not necessarily a punishment but like some interruption to the student's ability to continue to do that and often that means being sent out of class or being sent home being suspended or maybe ultimately even being expelled Because that creates a boundary that says you can't do this with impunity.

You cannot do this here because it is not safe.

We cannot have school if people are going to do this.

So that's just a boundary that is in place.

And in progressive discipline, if you do the same thing over and over again, you don't get the same consequence.

You get an escalating consequence.

And what that allows us to do, hopefully, we don't always do this right, but hopefully that allows us to have consequences that are not too severe, not overreacting to a given behavior, but at the same time, not just tolerating the same thing happening over and over and over again.

And violence from one student to another is a good example of that.

Like if two students get into a fight, they might get sent home for a couple of days, but it's not the end of the world.

If you have a student who is repeatedly assaulting people, putting people in the hospital, like that student is going to get escalating consequences and is eventually just not going to be there anymore.

And where we get mixed up about this is when we start thinking about changing the student's behavior.

For our students who struggle the most with behavior, the students who really break our hearts, we may not be able to change their behavior.

And it feels like kind of kicking someone when they're down to give bigger and bigger consequences to a student who is just not succeeding.

So from an individual behavior standpoint, that doesn't feel good.

Like if you were that student's therapist, you would not want that student to just keep getting bigger and bigger consequences.

But as school administrators, as educators, we're not the student's therapist.

We're responsible for everybody.

And that means our priority needs to be on protecting the learning environment.

And that may or may not be an incentive for the individual student to change their behavior.

And an incentive may not even be ultimately what, you know, they may need counseling, they may need medication, there may be a variety of things that need to change in that student's life.

to improve their behavior.

So we're not trying to motivate the individual.

That is not our primary goal in school discipline.

Our primary goal is to keep everybody safe because if we fail at that, we're putting everybody at risk, right?

We're putting learning at risk and we're putting people's safety at risk.

So we really have to be careful to be clear on this issue of the purpose of school discipline.

It is not to change the individual behavior.

It is not to prevent behaviors from recurring.

It is to keep everyone safe by putting a boundary in place that prevents behavior from occurring over and over and over again.

And crucially here, that student may continue to struggle in those areas.

That student may continue to do those things.

But what progressive discipline allows us to do is say, not here.

You might still struggle in those areas.

You might still do those things.

You might still explode in a rage and punch somebody, but it's not going to be one of our students.

And that's just how we have to do things to keep people safe in schools.

Let me know what you think.