The establishment of the detention room continues to be one of the hottest topics of discussion in parenting groups. But what’s all the fuss about? The problem that has heated spirits so much has found its solution. The headmistress of a top college in Bucharest comes up with an original proposal, which would instantly put out the “fires” that broke out on the Internet. And not only.
Students who disrupt classes will be sent to the detention room. Photo source: archive
If many parents fear that certain teachers could abuse the new power and punish innocent students, others brought up another problem: the fact that a student expelled from class will miss out on the subject taught. And education, as we all know, is compulsory up to the twelfth grade.
On the other side of the barricade, teachers questioned the lack of adequate space, but also the lack of staff to receive and supervise the students. All these fears, however, have an extremely simple solution that will be implemented at the ILCaragiale College in Bucharest: “The detention room will be in my office, and I will be the one sitting with the students,” the director of the high school, teacher Andreia Bodea, told us. “Caragiale is a large high school, I can afford the luxury of renting out a room and furnishing it. However, there are schools where this is impossible, especially since we are not talking about two or three children. 20 can fit in this room at once. what are you doing then Where do you put them all?”
Detention in the principal’s office: between pleasure and drudgery
Although she admits that there is no lack of space, she would have a problem with the staff, admits the director of Caragiale. “There is only one teacher on duty, and if two students from the fourth floor, one student from the second floor and two from the ground floor are taken out at the same time, on the grounds that they disturbed the classes, do a simple calculation of how long it takes for that person to go to -picks them all up. On the other hand, if you send them to the detention room alone, you’re basically inviting them not to go. How do you, as a teacher, know that they are actually going where they were sent? But maybe they stop to the toilet to smoke“.
Then, director Bodea draws attention to another aspect: in the detention room, students meet each other, with friends or acquaintances. And they just don’t feel like learning. “Why would they work on French, Romanian, mathematics if they meet each other there and anyway they are supervised by, say, a sports teacher?”
The headmistress of IL Caragiale College made a decision that will temper the protests of Facebook parents
For these reasons, the director of ILCaragiale proposed that the detention room be set up right in her office. “The director’s office is very spacious. We also have a very large board table where students could sit. I will bring this proposal to the Faculty Council, and if it is approved, this is how we will proceed. Whoever gets kicked out of class comes and sits with me. It’s a pleasant environment, nice furniture, air conditioning, they will have all the comfort. I, as a director, have fewer hours. So I will have time to hang out with them. And when I have to go to class, the duty teacher or someone else will sit in my office with them. We will see.”
Free discussions between the teacher and students will take place in the principal’s office. “I love children very much and I like to talk to them. To get to know your students beyond the academic environment, beyond the subject you teach and which they learn, seems extraordinary to me. It is perhaps the most beautiful part of the teaching job. I think that they will come with pleasure to these meetings, especially the students who know me, know me, whose teacher I am already”.
Light sleep in the detention room. Teacher: “Everything here is based on..sleep”
Director Andreia Bodea, however, does not like this measure of punishment. The detention room should not exist in the school, but she agrees that some sanctions should still be implemented, she says. “It isu I would have done it differently: I would have sent the student to the “work for the benefit of the school” area. But it is improperly called work. For example, I would have sent him to the library to help sort books and things like that to make the student useful, not a chore. Like in the movie harry potter, if you remember how students were sanctioned, with different didactic activities in school, depending on their age”.
We also wanted to find out the opinion of a teacher who will actually be able to put this punishment into practice. Ruxandra Achim, Romanian language teacher, told us that she also does not agree with this detention room, and this for a very simple reason: it will not have any effect in terms of correcting the children’s behavior. Instead, the teacher proposes, the lowering of the passing grade, which entails the withdrawal of the scholarship, would be a solution – drastic, to be sure – but which will really work.
“I remember the series Beverly Hills 90210, where the detention room was very trendy. It was really cool to get there. And that’s where the funniest parties and other things like that were arranged. Only punishment was not to get there! Let’s be serious! I see this detention room as a way to escape a certain class, a test for which the student did not prepare or simply does not feel like that subject that day. And what does he do? It annoys the teacher a little, he sends him to that room, doesn’t put them absence and the student.. what is he doing there? He’s sleeping! I am convinced of this with sleeping…that everything here is based on sleep”.
The teacher considers this scenario to be really funny, if it were not very serious. “You, as a student, walk around a room all day long. That maybe he doesn’t feel like participating in the Romanian language, but maybe not in mathematics or another subject either. And then what does he do? Is he in detention all day because he got kicked out of all the classes that day?”, asks the teacher.
As for the activities that, theoretically, these students have in the detention room, the teacher draws attention to something that, most likely, no one thought of. “Associating study and especially reading with a punishment… in the context where students read, generally speaking, less and less, seems to me the biggest mistake, an extremely erroneous way of approaching things. The student should be made to do their homework for the next class or be given worksheets for the subject they are missing because they were kicked out. But did not put to read! It seems to me to shout at the sky!”
Students should be penalized with lower grades and withdrawal of scholarships
The teacher Ruxandra Achim proposes, instead of this detention room, to sanction students with low behavior marks. “If you don’t sanction certain behaviors, they will become generalized. So there must be limits. An impudence, an indecent dress, an inappropriate behavior would become normality. That is why it is necessary to intervene through very clear sanctions, very well targeted in such a way as to leave no room for interpretation”.
The teacher proposes to lower the grade for carrying more easily compared to how it is currently done. “Let there be some quantifiable sanctions that hit them where it hurts the most: in the pocket, in the money. You don’t respect the rules, you have a low grade for wearing, you don’t get a scholarship anymore. Simple. What detention? To go there to what? And let’s not forget that the school is an educational institution, not a prison”.
The detention room, according to teacher Ruxandra Achim, is an unnecessary measure that would produce more chaos than order and discipline. “Probably, most of the teachers will not even implement it. But even so, this measure needs to be formalized: to find teachers to watch over the children. Let’s say it will be the duty teacher. But he has other responsibilities. After walking around the whole school during breaks, going up and down floors, going to the school yard, looking for students who smoke or doing who knows what other crazy things, in another hour he has to guard the people in the hall of detention. Then… let’s not say that this whole thing will get bogged down in the bureaucracy, because the employment contracts must be changed and this new responsibility added to the job description”.
The teacher believes that this measure – the establishment of the detention room – comes from a clumsy copying of models from outside. However, what works there does not necessarily work here. “Has anyone made a statistic to see in the long term what are the ebeneficial effects of such a room? I mean..did the misbehavior get fixed, did anyone learn anything from this, or did the students just get three hours worth of rest? On this day we sleep with our heads on the bench”.
