Isn't Switzerland the country of peace-loving,friendly people?
Your teacher wouldn't be the best representative I suppose.She sounds really power-hungry.

Writing punishment is not used so much nowadays because of reinforcement ; doing lines links bad feelings with school work.

How stupid to make a child do a writing punishment assignment. What's the benefit? Ugh...lets get real here, are we back in the dark ages or what?

I think it works well. It works better for DS than many other punishments. It might seem stupid to you but thank goodness we do not have to agree.

It may work in some cases, but it creates a strong connection in the child's brain between punishment and writing. It will teach them to dislike and resent writing assignments, even ones that are educational rather than given as punishment. That's not a good thing--do you really want your children to feel (even subconsciously) that a term paper is some sort of punishment? It's not--it's a healthy path to learning and achieving, but if a student has had many writing punishment assignments, they're not going to appreciate that fact.

A truly good teacher would NEVER give a writing punishment assignment.

DITTO Skye!!!

I did not realize I grew up in the dark ages.

Gardenboy I believe that you were at least in the DARK, maybe not the DARK AGES!:)
I agree that writing and punishment should NEVER accompany one another, because then the children associate writing with PUNISHMENT. My husband had my 9 year old write 50 times, "I will be home on time" because while he grew up that is what his mother did to him, but wouldn't you know, slowly my son who NEVER complained about writing in school was almost in tears when he has had homework involving writing of any kind.
Needless to say my husband is NOT allowed to give out the "Writing Lines" consequence anymore!!!

The writing can be a reminder of what you have done. Usually when this was practiced, when I was in school and while I was teaching helped remind the student. I may have had to write such as this and usually you had to do this at recess. It was a rare situation because who wanted to stay in during recess.

ARGardenboy, that reminds me that when I was in elementary school, some of the teachers made the children write sentences on the blackboard during recess. This is similiar to what you see Bart Simpson doing during the opening credits for The Simpsons. Missing recess was punishment enough but having to write for everyone to see made it even worse.

I think that writing punishment, especially lines, is an extremely effective punishment and should definately be used, particularly when other methods of discipline have been tried without success. People who say it doesn't work or that it serves no purpose have obviously either never tried it and never received it. Moreover, I don't buy the highly speculative (and, frankly, rather PC) argument that writing punishment makes kids not want to do academic writing assignments. Indeed, writing lines seems to me to be particularly effective because it is not academic. Rather, it is unambiguously punitive in nature. In addtion, the punishment is miserable for the kid, but easy for the teacher to check.

My dd's school uses lines as punishment. She is in 2nd grade, so I believe part of the point is to improve their handwriting skills. (If the lines are poorly written, they have to do them over.)

I have no problem with this whatsoever. She has never needed to be punished, but if it happens, I would rather she do lines than be made to sit out in the hall (what is the point?) or sent to the headmistress to be scolded. The kids see doing lines as payment for their misbehavior; after that everyone is on good terms again.

And yes, they have to do it during recess, so they do not miss any academic time.

This is an old-fashioned private school. Only a couple of times this year have children in her class been given lines. The teachers have high expectations for behavior and the children generally rise to meet them.

I have heard of a local school giving students, instead of writing lines, they needed to take a page out of a phone book and find the total for all of the phone numbers (ie. 555-0100 + 555-3569 + . . .). Or they would have students copy a page out of a dictionary exactly. These were called JUGs Justice Under God. Hmmm...now here is the start to some discussion I am sure.

My child misbehaved on the bus, was removed and had to copy the bus rules to hand in. I backed the school completely...he had to walk to and from school each day that he couldn't ride the bus. He showed me the bus rules he'd copied and inserted in the middle he'd written, "If you're still reading this, you're a bigger jerk than I thought." I told him if he handed it in and got caught, he'd have to suffer the consequences. Of course, he wasn't caught. I do not believe in writing/copying as punishment.

I hated it and never thought it served any purpose. Make them do double homework or something.

What the sadists at my school used to do was make the entire class do lines for the transgressions of a few unruly classmates. Which was totally wrong! In fact, one day in 7th grade, I had had it with doing that, I was a perfect A student and I told the teacher tearfully that I was not going to do it and it was not fair, I never did anything and the people who were bad should be the only ones to pay for what they did.

Guess what - the sadist teacher never ever made the entire class do lines again because of the jerks that couldn't keep their mouths shut.

I think she probably thought I would tell my parents on her.

Then there was the teacher who made my sister write "the raven" ten times for getting things wrong in school. NOT for acting up in class, just for getting things wrong.

School is so much better now, some teachers in the old days were real power tripping sadists, who literally beat their students.

I strongly believe in writing punishment, but I agree that it is neither fair, nor effective, to punish the entire class with a writing assignment or anything else for that matter. Indeed, in my experience as a student, the class punishment never worked, and actually tended to undermine classroom discipline because it would destroy the incentive for good kids to be good and it allowed bad kids to avoid individualized responsibility for their misdeeds.

Teachers' past mistakes in punishing the whole class, however, should not be allowed to detract from the fact that writing punishment can be extremely effective when directed against those who rountinely misbehave.

I don't know if this will be read by anyone, because of it being a few years since the last response and almost 10 years since the original post, but I wanted to put my 2 cents in on this topic. I believe it can be TOTALLY effective. I am an In-School Suspension Supervisor at a JR/SR High School. There are times people will cause problems in class and will be sent to me for the remainder of a period. LOTS of times they will come to my classroom with absolutely nothing, NOTHING! Not even a writing utensil. We've gotten to the age where technology is so prevolant that making kids write for a punishment is actually effective because they're not used to writing, instead they are used to typing almost all assignments on the computer. It kills the kids, I have come in, to write out anything. I had a kid that came in because he kept calling his classmates a name, even after the teacher told him to stop. So when he got sent to me I made him copy "My classmates aren't the 'inappropriate name,' I AM." He looked embarrassed when I gave him the paper to start copying. It was successful because he hasn't been back.

I think it is effective too, because it helps them to remember the consequences of doing it again. How do you feel about sniffing the trash...thats something my niece showed me.

If you feel so strongly that they will hate writing, then make them type the lines up on a computer..they like that better.

Nowadays I also let them type up the multiplication tables on the comp.