The detention room can make students relate negatively to school, and those who end up being punished could be stigmatized or even excluded, the Bucharest Student Council reported.
Schools are not required to set up a detention room. Photo source: archive
Bucharest students consider detention one of the drastic measures of an educational system facing “fundamental deficiencies”. They believe that, before punishing, teachers have a duty to prevent inappropriate behavior in class. “We should address the real causes of inappropriate behavior such as lack of emotional support, social problems and lack of proper education“, they said.
“Schools should encourage dialogue, not punishment”
Detention Hall, “although it can be seen as a short-term solution to behavioral problems, it does not address their emotional underpinnings,” the students think. Detention, they also believe, can create resentment”. “Instead of relying on punishment, schools should encourage dialogue, counseling and other methods to help students develop skills to manage emotions and behavior.”
Also, the students say, it is essential to consider the long-term effect of using detention. “Students who spend a lot of time in these classrooms can end up being stigmatized or excluded, which can aggravate their behavior problems and lead to school dropouts, a problem that Romania is facing. Instead, an approach that emphasizes the integration of students into the school community and personalized support can have much better results.” consider Bucharest students.
“We return to education with the whip”
Iuliana Constantinescu, president of the Parents’ Association of the “Lucian Blaga” High School in Bucharest, stated for Adevărul that she is returning to education with the whip. “I see a desire to start over-punishing children. It seems to me that we are moving very much in this direction, to find methods of sanction, in the conditions in which today’s generations can no longer be educated with the whip and in the conditions in which we do nothing to prevent violence and aggression in schools” , consider the parent. “We don’t have space in schools to set up school counseling offices, we don’t have enough school counselors to talk to the children, to support them, to support them. Instead, we are interested in where we will punish the naughty ones. We are not interested in why we ended up in the situation of having to punish them, nor how to solve this problem”, Iuliana Constantinescu also stated this.
That detention room, the parent also said, does not come together with what other education systems offer, those abroad. A child who will end up in that room must not only be punished and that’s it. He must also benefit from counselling, intervene in this regard with specialists, he must understand why he ended up there and be supported to change his behavior”.
Parents’ fear: teachers could abuse
From the 2024-2025 school year, students who disrupt classes can be sent to another room under the mandatory supervision of a teacher or an auxiliary teacher, according to the new Student Statute, a document published in the Official Gazette. However, the measure is not mandatory: each school decides whether to set up this detention room, and this depends to a large extent on the space it has.
The Student Statute does not provide for the concrete situations in which a teacher can send the student to that room. What does it mean to be naughty? What does it mean to disturb the hour? What does it mean to bother your colleagues? These “definitions” are not provided in the document. It is also the reason why, many parents fear, teachers could abuse this power.
