Dear Readers,

Please check out our new Opinion Poll on The Use of Cell Phones in School and cast your vote by the end of February 2013. As you know …

your opinion counts

Our January 2013 poll was about Punishment:

Punishment should be discouraged since it perpetuates the cycle of abuse and achieves little in terms of discipline, especially since the core issue is almost never addressed.

• I agree. We have to understand and internalize that positive guidance works better than punishment in order to teach students right from wrong. (89%, 41 Votes)

• I disagree. When you don’t punish students you erode discipline and encourage unruly behavior. With certain disciplinary issues, punishment is the only thing that works. (11%, 5 Votes)

The overwhelming majority of our respondents believe that positive guidance, rather than punishment is a more effective and preferable way for disciplining children to help them differentiate right from wrong and so deal with the root cause of the problem. Only a very small minority of the respondents believe that in some situations punishment is the only thing that will work to discipline a child.