Punishment Case Study

Discussion Assignment Unit 3.
Introducation.
The concept of punishment has been misunderstood and misapplied by majority of many who think and suppose that punishment is a means of inflicting pain on the learner by beating as majority think by so doing it will change the behaviour of the learner and conform him to be a responsible future citizen. Punishment in a four wall classroom goes beyond a teacher using a stick as a teaching aid, to adopting other measures which can modify, encourage and bring permanent change in the behaviour of the learners.
This is one of the problem causing “friction” between parents and school administers in my country .School administers insist learners should be punished as a means of instilling discipline and parents have divided opinions because others are saying learners must be punished at school and others are saying learners must not be punished.
When we look closely at operant conditioning developed by B.F, Skinner, “positive and negative do not mean good and bad instead, positive means you are adding something, and negative means you are taking something away, reinforcement means you are decreasing a behaviour,”(Spielman, el at.2014, p.198). But all these enforcements must aim at modelling the behaviour of the learners not on short term

There are situations in classrooms and school in general were positive or negative reinforcements as means of punishments cannot work. For example a learner may not be doing well in class because he may be mentally retarded and in this case punishment may not work on this learner so it requires employing other means of therapy to help this learner.
And also positive and negative reinforcement may not work in a situation where students are rioting and breaking school properties in form of strike and in this case it requires an immediate solution by calling police to pick them and locked up to avoid un wanted behaviour and this will serve as an example to the