Teach English in Huadexianchaoyang Zhen - Wulanchabu Shi — Ulanqab

Both in and out of school, student may have to undergo some disciplinary sanctions in the form of punishment. Punishment is the act of inflicting some form of penalty as retribution for an offense meted out by some authorities. Authority in the case of student could be teachers at school, parents and sometimes older siblings at home. On the other hand, motivation according to Encarta 2009 is “a feeling of, enthusiasm, interest, commitment that makes somebody want to do something, or something that causes such feeling”. Despite the Bible’s recommendation that to spare the rod is to spoil the child, some school of thoughts have been vocal against punishment (corporal punishment) because they simply uphold the ideas of children’s rights. Punishments are of different kinds and they all influence student’s motivation either negatively or positively. Punishment is likely to increase student’s aggressiveness thereby influencing student's motivation negatively. Despite the fact that, punishment seems to be very appropriate in controlling student’s behavior and children’s discipline, it has been discovered that the punishment employed by some teachers, parents and older siblings, seems to be an ineffective, dangerous and unacceptable method of discipline as it yields negative rather than positive impacts on student. Some cases of punishments have been judged to be child abuse rather than punishment. Physical punishment exposes student to aggressive behavior, and they are likely to learn such behaviors. Punishment may legitimize violence in the student’s mind making them to become aggressive in their relationships with their siblings or friends. An aggressive student would hardly concentrate and participate smoothly in classroom activities or group work. Even when help is offered by teachers, classmates or siblings such a student easily gets offended and turn to be aggressive towards these people. This will greatly impact their motivation negatively and so too their learning output. Again, punishment increases anti-social behaviors in children thereby killing their motivation to interact freely. In the modern societies, both parents and teachers are sometimes scared of punishing student when it comes to using corporal since it may be perceived as child abuse and a reason for the intervention of student’s services and authorities. Consequently, they sort other forms of punishments such as yelling, withdrawal from activities or withholding, isolation and even grounding. Most often than not these punishments are meted out in the presence of other student, friends and family as the case may be. This can easily make the student feel disgraced and unfit for the society and consequently develop some anti-social tendencies. As a result of this, they lack the motivation to interact and a student who doesn’t interact can hardly participate in any learning activities such as games, peer or group work. This greatly reduces their motivation and willingness to build a team spirit. Furthermore, punishment may lead to poor quality of child-parent or teacher-student relationship as the case may be. Whatever form of punishment used, the student’s feelings are somehow hurt. This may go a long way to affect the way the student perceives the person meting out this punishment. The student might nurse some negative feelings against that person. If not well handled these feeling might develop into fear or hatred. Once this happens it becomes completely impossible for the child to learn anything from such a people. Some student have developed hatred for a particular subject simply because they hate the teacher of that subject. This adds to the fact that punishment has a negative impact on children's motivation. Moreover, whatever form of punishment used on a child, it could lead to mental health problems or even physical deformation. In the case of corporal punishment, the child might be badly injured, and this may lead to other mental health related issues or physical deformation. Other forms of punishments can also play on the student’s psychology negatively. If this lingers for long, it might have long term effects and can affect the student’s learning process adversely. A student who is not mentally healthy cannot have a positive motivation to learn anything. Despite all the negative consequences of punishment, punishment still has some positive impacts on the student’s motivation, no matter the form of punishment, it inflicts pain on the student be it physical or psychological pain. Take a student who has been punished for not performing well in a test or exams, he or she will do everything and anything to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, this includes working hard in other to do well in the next test or exam. A student who has been punished for some other poor behavior, for example bullying, stealing or cheating during test or exams will avoid such behavior in future so as not to be punished again. In this case we can say that punishment has a positive impact on student’s motivation. As a matter of consideration, in order to ensure the effectiveness of punishment as a disciplinary measure, punishment should be accompanied with an explanation for why the student is punished and advice on how that can be avoided in the future or what kind of behavior would be appropriate. The teacher or the parent should give this explanation before delivering the punishment not after. This enables the student to be able to connect the particular action to the punishment. The teacher or parent should be consistent in delivering punishment. This would go a long way to motivate the student to do the right thing in future.