All students should be held responsible for their behaviour

Educators do not speak of discipline at all nowadays. In order not to offend these woke sensibilities, educators do not use the word punish or punishment. Instead, nowadays we speak about consequences. Some educational policymakers do not even agree with giving the misbehaving child a consequence. Rather, they favour a restorative justice approach, where the child is spoken to and made to realise his or her mistake. However, I am sure that any professional working in the child development field would tell you that consequences are a necessary part of creating a safe and structured environment in schools. Although the words ‘consequences’ and ‘punishment’ sound negative today, they are there as part of a system which helps to keep students safe and protected both at school and at home.

Maltese educators should have a voice in this conversation, as our schools are also affected by the problem of disruptive behaviour. Whilst the drive to have inclusive education in our schools is to be applauded, this should never be to the detriment of other well-meaning and hard-working students. Policymakers who make decisions on school discipline are far removed from the classroom. This is why educators in the field should be consulted.

Students need consequences in order for them to learn the correct ways how to behave. Without consequences, they will only continue with their poor behaviour choices. The problem is that bad behaviour, if not tackled, will escalate over time. Children are always trying to figure out how far they can go in their world. They do this by pushing boundaries and testing the limits they are allowed to reach. If children do not find any resistance, they will never learn what is right and wrong. Creating structures and having predictable responses helps the students to learn how to self-regulate themselves.

The Maltese education field has a lack of educators while many seasoned ones are leaving the profession. One of the reasons is that the bad behaviour of a few persistent troublemakers is being allowed to fester unchecked. Educators are getting tired of working in an environment which sometimes is not only unpleasant but can turn out also not to be safe. This means that too many students are losing critical opportunities for learning because of bad behaviour in the classroom and educators expend all their energy on such misbehaving students instead of teaching.