MOTION #70: THIS HOUSE BELIEVES
THAT PARENTS SHOULD BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR SCHOOL-GOING CHILDREN'S
DISCIPLINE PROBLEMS
This is an idea that
has been floated by some education reform advocates (mainly conservatives) who
believe that the problem of childhood discipline in the classroom cannot be
remedied unless parents themselves are acting at home to engender good
disciplinary habits in their children.
The idea was briefly enacted in both Florida and Michigan. In Florida small fines were imposed on
parents and in Michigan coveted parking permits were suspended when children
misbehaved. Both programs were promptly
discontinued due to parental outcry. In the United Kingdom there have been
cases of parents being jailed for failing to stop their children being truant
from school.
Future iterations of
this idea in the United States may involve charter schools where parents of
children with track records of disciplinary problems voluntarily enrol their
children in a school with such a contract.
Charter schools can state explicit requirements of students in terms of
behaviour in their charter which can then be legally enforced. Modelling the
debate in this fashion may help avoid some of the parental consent issues of
the debate, although it is by no means necessary for proposition to take this
strategy in the debate.
Another version of
this debate is to hold parents liable for the criminal actions of children
during school going years. For instance,
if a child is caught shop lifting, one might impose a fine on the parents in
addition to punishment handed down to the child. Some of the arguments below are tailored more
specifically to this version of the debate, although the arguments considered
can be modified to fit into either debate.
The assumption behind this brief is that by and large the children being
discussed are those with chronic discipline problems.
Pros
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Cons
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Parental Incentives. Addressing the behavioural problems of children requires active parental
participation. However, in many cases,
parents are either not fully aware of their children’s problems, or more
importantly, delay the active disciplining of their children.
This is critical, as for the cycle of negative and
positive reinforcement to be effective in behaviour modification, there must
be a temporal link between misbehaviour and any potential punishment. In a desire to avoid future fines, or
whatever the penalty the parents face, there is an active incentive to not
only intervene in the child’s misbehaviour, but also to do so in a timely way,
which is the most proven way to change children’s behaviour.
Moreover, if there is any tendency for parents to
overlook or avoid the problems of chronically unruly children, this serves as
an impetus for keeping up with discipline notices and paying attention to the
child’s infractions.
A lack of parental involvement has for example
regularly been cited as being partially to blame for the riots in the UK
during August 2011.
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The danger for abuse argument from the opposition side
is a good counterargument. Moreover,
one might analyse the probabilities that this particular incentive will be a
tipping point in the case of marginal parents (the ones that are not already
fully involved in their children’s discipline for whom this might be the
tipping point). Most caring parents
will already be quite invested and do the best they can because they care for
their child. Those who do lapse likely
have some sort of structural familial problems, whether they hold many jobs
and work very hard to keep the family going, or are simply bad parents. In these cases, is this likely to be the
factor that changes these parents’ behaviours? Unlikely.
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Collaborative Approach. In order for a child’s misbehaviour to be successfully
remedied, the child must receive a consistent message on what is appropriate
both at home and at school. In many
instances parents may condone behaviour that schools and teacher find
unacceptable. In other instances, professionals
at schools can aid parents in targeting specific behaviours to work on in a
specific order in a program that integrates the child’s behaviour at both
school and home. Moreover, uniform and
consistent rewards and negative reinforcements from school and home are
tremendously useful for helping rehabilitate a child’s behaviour.
When initiating such programs, the major problem is
often that the parents give in and do not adhere to the agreed upon program,
which serves to teach the child that unacceptable behaviour is sometimes
condonable. It’s understandable that
parents, who must be with the children a majority of the time, sometimes may
find it easier to simply give in and pacify the child and inadvertently award
destructive behaviour. Therefore, a
system of parental investment, as proposed here, will ensure that the parents
have something riding on sticking to a disciplinary program as well, which
ultimately aids the child.
In the case of parents being penalized for criminal
offenses by children, one can modify this argument to fit by noting that
often juvenile facilities will use schools as part of a behavioural
modification program, therefore the consistency noted above is still
critical.
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The temporal linking argument itself cannot be
disputed, but the idea that this is what gets parents invested can again be
questioned, as noted above.
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Children Held Accountable. Often, children who have been trapped in a cycle of lack of discipline
and disciplinary problems tend not to care about their punishment. Detention
may be seen as a welcome respite from classes, and other punishments over
time may cease to make an impression on the child. After all, there is only so much that an
institution can do to discipline a child.
Using this mechanism opens up a far more effective
repertoire of discipline. More
importantly, while the child may cease to regard any punishments handed down
on him or her, often there will still be a desire to avoid actively harming
the parents, which occurs under this system.
The argument also extends in the case of criminal
punishments. In the psychology of a
child, he or she may not fully internalize the effects on their future a
shoplifting arrest may have. However,
the thought of their parents being punished in such an offense may lead to
the deterrence necessary to prevent such actions.
In effect, the argument is that when punishments to the
child him or herself fail to act as a deterrent, the child seeing punishments
imposed on the parents as a result of his or her actions may reinvigorate the
deterrent effect.
In addition, this allows an extra tool in the teacher’s
arsenal, and the mere thought of perhaps “triggering” a parental punishment
may help bring some children into line.
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Authority aversion is a good counterargument here. (see
op argument 4)
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Parental Responsibility. In most cases, in which the child is not subject to some sort of
constitutional problem (genetic condition or otherwise), the disruptive
behaviour of a child is a reflection of in adequate parental intervention
over time. A normal child under
normal circumstances should be expected to conform to behavioural
expectations, and the failure to do so represents a partial inadequate job by
the parents.
The result is a cost that is transmitted to
society. Children that are disruptive
in school or in society via the criminal justice system cost the system extra
money either in school resources and time or judicial-police resources as
well as in the more obvious costs such as fixing vandalism and graffiti. Even
worse; if a student drops out as a result of his discipline problems the cost
to society has been estimated as $232,000-388,000. Given that the parent is
in part to blame for failing to control the child’s behaviour, in the time
during which the parent is the primary custodian of the child, it is fair to
pass on a measure of this cost to the parent.
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The “unjust” argument is a good counter. One could cite some neurobiology evidence
that lack of discipline is due to complex cognitive deficits that manifest
through delayed brain development even in otherwise normal seeming children,
which belies the “parental responsibility/failure” view.
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Children are too young to internalize and understand
broad philosophies of responsibility.
A small child refrains from stealing a cookie out of fear of being
caught, not out of some grand regard for a morally just universe in which his
actions must be scrutinized. Later on,
as the child gets older, his/her understanding can mature.
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Individual
Responsibility. The philosophy
underling the proposition is one in which the child is not solely responsible
for his or her own behaviour. Even if
the threats of parental punishment and involvement are successful in the
short term in modifying a child’s behaviour, the long term sequlae is that
the child’s good behaviour is predicated not on an understanding of the
consequence of their behaviour and a consideration of their own long term
interests, but merely out of fear and external consequences.
In the long run, instilling this message is likely to
lead to future misbehaviour as the external punishments, in this case imposed
on the parents, fall away. Once the
child reaches an age at which the parents cannot be punished or the child
does not care about parental punishment, building an ethic around such
external consequences will fail to deter the child from misbehaviour. (See argument 4)
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The “parental responsibility” argument is a good
counter here. An appeal to the fact
that some lax parents clearly raise spoiled children can also be effective in
building intuition about the notion that parents are imposing a cost through
their actions.
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Unjust. There is an argument to be made that this form of
punishment of parents is simply unjust.
The legal basis of punishment is based on the principle that a sane
individual is fully responsible for his or her actions. One can always point to dysfunctional
families or other influences that may have had an effect on an individual’s
actions, but the level of influence is impossible to quantify. Therefore, any level of punishment that is
meted out to external sources cannot be matched proportionally to actions
taken by these outside parties, thereby abrogating the principle of
proportional punishment. As a result,
any just system of punishment is bound by this constraint, and shifting
responsibility to external sources is not consistent with our principles.
This argument functions best in the criminal justice
context, but applies in the school context as well. Schools that adopt this policy must examine
the ethical underpinnings of the policy, and if the policy itself is immoral,
then regardless of its efficacy (which is disputed in the first argument and
later on) the policy should not be adopted.
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One could say that in cases in which abuse is suspected
the program would be suspended for that child, and that teacher’s always have
an obligation to report abuse (in the U.S., anyhow).
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Danger for Abuse. Many children that have consistent behavioural
problems at school come from dysfunctional families in which either physical
or emotional abuse and neglect is common. This has then resulted in behavior
disorders such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder. While it would be nice to
believe that parents would respond to the stated incentives in a healthy way,
it must be considered that it is just as likely that in some of these households
parents would crack down violently (again, either emotionally or physically )
on their children. Such actions by
parental role models often lead to a vicious cycle in which the behaviour is
then continued at school and in future generations.
It is difficult to
say what proportion of households may respond in this fashion, but if even a
small proportion of children are actively harmed by this policy, it is a
strong argument against its uniform adoption.
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One way to deal with this argument is by noting that
this would be one tool in a school’s arsenal.
If it proves to be obviously counterproductive, then it will not be
employed, in the same way that other disciplinary tactics schools/society can
impose will not be used if they are seen to be adverse or ineffective.
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Authority Aversion. A short argument, but a potentially powerful one. The assumption that children will not act
out even more under such a regime in a bid to lash out at parents is
untenable. Misbehaviour at school is
often a rebellion against authority anyway, and the ultimate authority in
most children’s lives is the parents.
Therefore, as acting out against both of these institutions is
consistent with the misbehaving mind set, it follows that tying school
misbehaviour to parental detriments is unlikely to affect the child and may
even serve to encourage their bad deeds.
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