Teachers now have the power to discipline, hoping that a single spark can start a prairie fire

For many front-line teachers who have been struggling for a long time, a big event has happened in the past few days. Recently, the Qingdao Municipal Government issued local regulations \”Qingdao Primary and Secondary School Management Measures\”, which stipulates in Article 11, Paragraph 3: \”Primary and secondary schools should criticize and educate or appropriately punish students who affect the order of education and teaching; if the circumstances are serious, , sanctions will be imposed depending on the circumstances. The school\’s disciplinary regulations should be disclosed to students.\” It is understood that this is the first time that the concept of \”punishment\” has been proposed in national or local educational regulations. As soon as this move came out, it won unanimous applause from front-line teachers, and the comments from various media were also overwhelming. An old teacher said it well: \”This proves the courage and responsibility of the island city\’s legal and education departments.\” Some commentators also expressed a clear stance: Returning the school\’s right to appropriate punishment is a rational return to education. In fact, teachers\’ disciplinary power is an old topic, and many knowledgeable people have written articles calling for it. Yan Xuemin, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences, said that the right to discipline is an inherent right in the teaching profession, and it is also an educational method determined by the physical and mental development characteristics of young people. Sun Zengxin, president of the Qingdao Home-School Cooperation Promotion Association, also believes that if a student makes a mistake and is not punished, it is a harm to others; if a student makes a mistake and is not punished accordingly, it is a kind of harm to others. indulgence. With the whip of \”punishment\”, students will have a bottom-line awareness and can make children consciously self-disciplined. Many facts have proven that our over-protection of underage students has had certain negative effects. Appropriate punishment can help students establish a sense of rules and is more beneficial to their growth. However, we need to give a warning to our colleagues in Qingdao who have the power to punish. If you want to implement the power of punishment, there are two aspects worth worrying about. First, there is a lack of implementation details. Although teachers have the power to discipline, they can no longer be like before, kicking anyone in the butt if they are naughty, and hitting the palms of their hands with a cane if they disrupt the order of the class. How to grasp the scale of \”appropriate punishment\” is a difficult problem. It is true that many foreign countries have given teachers the right to discipline, but generally they have clear disciplinary methods and standards. What mistakes should be punished, what kind of punishment should be received, and the methods and methods of punishment have strict regulations and operating procedures. If Qingdao does not yet have such detailed rules, it is easy for teachers to fail to grasp the standards in practice, which is not conducive to teachers\’ performance of educational management responsibilities, nor is it conducive to maintaining students\’ physical and mental health. Second, the level of the \”Management Measures\” is too low. Qingdao’s primary and secondary school management measures are local regulations, which of course have legal effect. However, in judicial practice, there is a principle that “higher-level laws are better than lower-level laws.” my country\’s \”Compulsory Education Law\” clearly stipulates that \”teachers shall respect the personality of students, shall not discriminate against students, shall not impose corporal punishment, disguised corporal punishment or other behaviors that insult the human dignity of students, and shall not infringe upon students\’ legitimate rights and interests.\” In the \”Teachers Law\” There are similar regulations. Compared with the above two national laws, Qingdao City\’s \”Measures\” are obviously subordinate laws. Where is the boundary between \”punishment\” and \”corporal punishment or disguised corporal punishment\”?, no one can tell. Once parents raise objections to teachers’ punishment and seek legal action, let alone the absence of implementation details, even if there are details, teachers, schools and even the education administration department will probably lose the case. Overprotecting the rights of minors and ignoring the obligations they should perform; one-sided emphasis on teachers\’ obligations and ignoring their rights is an objective shortcoming at present. Qingdao took the lead in giving teachers the power to discipline teachers in order to correct this phenomenon. But it remains to be seen whether Qingdao can correct the national bias. As a \”first timer\”, Qingdao City has two possibilities after the implementation of relevant regulations: First, it is successfully implemented with good results and becomes a spark that starts a prairie fire, with other places following suit, and ultimately implemented at the national level. Top-level design to formulate more authoritative and enforceable national regulations. The second is that when encountering difficulties, the baby is stillborn, and eventually returns to the old path of \”you can\’t control the naughty child, and you can\’t afford to mess with the parents\”. We expect the result to be the first case.