Recent orders
Discipline in Education, Past and Present
“Discipline in Education, Past and Present”
Throughout the history of classroom education, many different types of disciplinary systems have been applied by teachers and other authority figures in schools for the sole purpose of controlling student behaviour. These systems include corporal punishment, psychological abuse or neglect, and assertive discipline. Although two of these three topics are illegal at this time, they were all widely used in schools across the country a short time ago.
Corporal punishment in general can be defined as the infliction of pain or confinement as a penalty for an offense committed by a student. During the time that corporal punishment was used by schools all over the United States and Canada, parents did not have any say in school discipline. It was completely up to the school authority figures on the type of punishment and the severity of the punishment given to the student. The classroom teacher had the most say in the matter since it was the teacher who usually administered the punishment to the students. Because of this, some teachers (who especially liked the idea of physical punishment) took advantage of the minor guidelines set by the principal to protect students from excessive physical beatings. These guidelines varied from school to school, but often included length, width and thickness of the paddle or any other weapon used, the amount of times the student may be struck by the weapon, and other minor details about other types of physical punishment. The list of weapons that were acceptable for teachers to use include long: rubber hoses, leather straps and belts, sticks, rods, straight pins, hard plastic baseball bats, and arrows. If at the time a teacher did not have his/her weapon, they would often resort to punching, kicking, slapping and shaking as ways to “get children’s attention”. Besides these common manoeuvres of punishment, other and often more painful techniques were used by teachers. Children in a class for the learning disabled claimed that their teacher, and her aide banged their heads into their desks until some students were unconscious, twisted their arms, and even tried strangulation. Another teacher shook hot tabasco sauce in the mouths of the troublesome student and smeared it in their faces. When parents found out about this specific act of cruelty, they were outraged and took their case to state officials. The final verdict on this case was that they saw nothing wrong with forcing kids to eat something they did not like (Butterfield 1983). In the Christian schools, this kind of punishment was related to the concept of original sin and the need to combat Satan by beating the devil out of children. This same idea was used in other religions as well, and children were beaten because of mental illness, or disease. One of the most common arguments for corporal punishment is that its abolition would leave teachers powerless to control students, especially those who might be a threat to the teacher. Despite this, it has been proven that most corporal punishment is inflicted against relatively defenceless students who are too small or weak to strike back. Now that corporal punishment is illegal in almost all areas including the Unites States and
Canada, the only physical force that can be used by teachers is in specific situations (with the unintentional of inflicting pain) such as to quell a disturbance, to protect oneself, property, or another person.
When a child is physically abused, absence from the abuser results in a relatively quick healing of the physical wounds, but the emotional scars left by the abuse last a lifetime. For this reason, many psychologists believe that when a child is psychologically abused in schools, it will have a far worse effect on children all throughout their lifetime, and quite often lead to stress related diseases (ulcer, depression etc.) and may even lead to suicide. It is a common mistake that a child cannot be psychologically abused unless they are physically beaten, or abused. This could not be farther from the truth. Physical abuse accounts for only 20% of the total psychological damage left on abused children. There were many things that were done to children by their classroom teachers that had a far worse result on the student than any physical abuse would ever have. The most common of these is constant humiliation. It was not uncommon for teachers in the past to repeatedly criticize and laugh at a particular student’s disability, or even creativity for the main reason of punishing the student for a minor offense. Teachers did this by often reading a student’s personal journal to the whole class, reading a student’s grades, and most often apprehending and degrading the student about his or her appearance, family, or school work in front of the whole class. This kind of humiliation is difficult to take even as an adult, never mind a ten year old child. As a result of this so called “punishment”, many students who were constantly embarrassed and degraded over a long period of time suffered from psychological abnormalities such as insomnia, nightmares, and even schizophrenia. Another such psychological “punishment” used by teachers was seclusion. This is not to be confused with the idea of suspension, or removal from class. Seclusion often meant locking misbehaved children up in to small dark closets, or damp dark basements for long periods of time. In one specific case, an eleven year old child who slipped and fell while walking down the hall, was put into a small, dark, wet almost cubby hole where janitorial supplies were kept. He ended up spending an incredible twenty-eight hours in this closet before the teacher remembered that he had locked him in with a pad lock the day before. The boy was able to drink water because there was a running hose in the room. The parents of the child were so scared and outraged that authorities were notified, but once again it was decided that only the teachers can decide the severity of the punishment.
Assertive discipline is a very broad term, and can be achieved by using many different techniques. The main idea of assertive discipline is that it forces a student to do or carry out an unpleasant task as a punishment for a wrongdoing. Assertive discipline is used in schools today, and does not include any physical, or emotional harm that may damage a student’s ability to learn. This does not mean that teachers cannot apprehend and punish a student for intolerable behaviour, but they cannot do it by any means of inflicting students with fear of possible abuse, or maltreatment. In this day and age, teachers must watch carefully how they discipline their students because one slip of the tongue, or hand for that matter may lead to criminal charges of assault, or other related charges. Many teachers have now been stripped of their right to teach just for a small comment to a student that may have been interpreted the wrong way by the student. It is recommended now that teachers always have a witness present while speaking privately, or a tape recorder to avoid such devastating mishaps. Every public and secondary school teacher in the world has their own discipline system.
Some teachers are more lenient than others, but each teacher should ensure that the consequences for a misbehaving student is great enough to persuade students to think again before breaking any rules. There are many different systems a teacher can use. Still being used most of all is the traditional detention. In this system, if a student misbehaves, he/she must spend a certain amount of their own free time in the class after school or during lunch. The only problem with this is that there are the few student who don’t care if they spend the rest of their life in the class and may brake rules on purpose just to achieve this. This is often due to unpleasant home or social situations. Another system that is still being widely used is the “Write Out” punishment. This includes writing certain things out 1000 times, to copying a page of a dictionary for homework. This is an all-around unpleasant thing to do, and is probably one of the better systems used. Throughout all the different discipline plans, each teacher must be positive but stern while punishing students. Verbal apprehensions in private also may have a positive effect on misbehaving students.
Of all the different types of discipline studied, Assertive discipline has the most positive results on students. It has been proven to be better at stopping students from unacceptable behaviour, as well as not damaging them emotionally, or physically. Both Physical and emotional abuse have a very negative effect on students at the time, and the emotional scars created last a life time.
Bibliography
Canter, Lee and Marlene Canter. Assertive Discipline. Santa Monica, CA: Lee Canter and Associates, 1992
Hyman, Irwin A. Reading Writing and the Hickory Stick. Toronto: Lexington Books, 1990.
McManus, Mick. Troublesome Behaviour in the Classroom. New York: Nichols Publishing, 1989.
“World Book Encyclopedia”. Toronto: World Book Inc, 1991 edition. Pp.88-89
a public employee
and a member of the intelligence
Culturally Competent Assessment
Culturally Competent Assessment
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Professor’s Name
Date
Culturally Competent Assessment
Introduction
Cultural competence means being able to understand and interact well with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and being well-informed of your cultural values and beliefs and how they differ from the beliefs and values of other people. To be culturally competent, an individual must have a basic understanding of their own culture, be willing to learn and appreciate the cultural practices of other people, and the individual must have positive attitudes towards cultural differences and be ready to accept and respect those variations. Culturally competent assessment involves specific styles of cultural service delivery, using a person’s first language, and assessing an individual as a cultural being before test administration utilizing cultural orientation categories. This paper will focus on culturally competent assessment as the main exam topic and discuss the importance of culturally competent assessment in multicultural counseling, the essential elements of culturally competent assessment, and finally conclude with an agreement or disagreement with Sue et al. (2022) presentation of the topic.
The Importance of Culturally Competent Assessment to Multicultural Counseling
According to Stobierski (2021), multicultural counseling is used to illustrate a particular method of counseling practice that considers how different aspects of an individual’s cultural identity, values, and beliefs might affect the person’s mental health. Factors that can influence an individual’s mental health include issues regarding race, gender identity, immigration status, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and religion. Cultural competence is essential when dealing with mental health matters since it gives room for the counselor to build trust with the patient, show empathy, overcome language barriers, ask questions, and evaluate how various cultures view and understand, and handle mental health problems. In addition, a multicultural counselor needs to exercise culturally competent assessment when dealing with different patients to improve the outcomes of all the patients. Another reason why culturally competent assessment is essential to multicultural counseling is that developing cultural competence helps a multicultural counselor to communicate, understand, and effectively interact with patients from diverse cultural backgrounds. Besides, it allows the patient and the counselor to compare various cultures with their own, thus understanding the differences.
In addition, culturally competent assessment is essential to multicultural counseling because, through culturally competent assessment, individuals can gain a better understanding of attitudes, values, and beliefs of different cultures, thus being able to appropriately consider and respond to the differences in cultural practices in planning, implementing, and assessing health education and promotions interventions and programs. In addition, according to Jun (2018), when it comes to multicultural counseling, multicultural counselors should be culturally competent as this will help them to accept and acknowledge the differences in behavior, appearance, and culture of different patients from a wide range of backgrounds. Notably, culturally competent mental health counselors need to be able to suspend judgment. When a multicultural counselor is culturally competent, this helps the counselor to put aside their own perspectives, thus building more authentic, stronger, and trusting relationships with their clients. Lastly, culturally competent assessment is essential to multicultural counseling because being a culturally competent counselor helps to improve communications with the clients hence keeping them safer. Clear communication between the counselor and the client allows the counselor to collect accurate information.
The Essential Elements of Culturally Competent Assessment
The five essential elements of cultural competence assessment include; cultural knowledge, awareness, encounters, cross-cultural skills, and cultural desire.
Cultural Awareness
Cultural awareness is the procedure of carrying out a self-evaluation and critical reflection of an individual’s biases toward different beliefs and an in-depth evaluation and understanding of one’s cultural upbringing. Also, cultural awareness contains being conscious of documented racism in health care delivery (Campinha-Bacote, 2019). When it comes to cultural awareness, people must be careful with how they react to other people’s cultures and what they are supposed to do to be operational in cross-cultural situations. Therefore, multicultural counselors should be culturally competent to ensure that they are morally committed to serving all their patients regardless of the patient’s beliefs, values, and practices.
Cultural Knowledge
Cultural knowledge means that an individual is well-informed about the cultural history, characteristics, beliefs, values, and behaviors of other cultural or ethnic groups. By being culturally aware, an individual can comprehend and appreciate different cultural values, customs, and beliefs, thus being able to interact with other people without judgment and prejudice. According to Campinha-Bacote (2019), cultural knowledge includes integrating health-related practices, thoughts, and cultural ethics of ethnically and culturally various populations, treatment efficacy among ethnically and culturally diverse populations, and disease prevalence and incidence among people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Knowing cultural competence prevents professional healthcare providers from being myopic in their views. Also, it helps them in offering the best services to all patients despite of their cultural beliefs or social status.
Cross-Cultural Skills
According to Campinha-Bacote (2019), cultural skill is the capacity to carry out a cultural valuation to gather related cultural data and information concerning patients served by a caregiver or multicultural counselor. Cultural skills allow people to effectively work, interact, and build strong relationships with individuals from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Cross-cultural skills are essential to cultural competence because they allow caregivers and their patients to form strong relationships.
Cultural Encounters
Cultural encounters motivate healthcare givers to directly participate in face-to-face interactions with clients from different cultural backgrounds to alter their attitudes regarding a cultural group, thus preventing potential stereotyping. According to Campinha-Bacote (2019), constant cultural encounters are required to obtain cultural skills, desire, awareness, and knowledge. Cultural encounters influence an individual’s way of communication, norms, and values. Through cultural encounters, cultures are developed and continue to be developed by individuals who are members of dynamic relationships with sustained mutual influence. Through cultural encounters, multicultural counselors become mindful that each encounter is a chance for inquisitiveness, critique, life-long learning and self-evaluation.
Cultural Desire
Cultural desire is an encouragement for multicultural counselors who wish to take place in the process of seeking cultural encounters and becoming culturally knowledgeable, culturally aware, and culturally skillful. Besides, cultural desire involves an individual’s willingness to accept and respect cultural differences and the willingness to become open and learn from other people’s opinions. Cultural desire is a type of encouragement that requires an individual to have passion (Campinha-Bacote, 2019). Lastly, cultural desire includes a genuine urge to become open and flexible with other people, to accept the variations, and build on the similarities.
Agreement with Author’s Presentation of Culturally Competent Assessment
I agree with the authors’ presentation of culturally competent assessment since the authors have outlined the various variables that influence diagnosis, evaluation, and case conceptualization, guiding the reader’s understanding of multiple populations presented in the book. I agree with Sue et al. (2022) that the accurate evaluation, case conceptualization, and diagnosis of the patient are the main prerequisites to the delivery of appropriate care and treatment to the patients, and they are all dependent on the perspectives, values, and characteristics of both the patient and the counselor or the therapist. According to the authors, culturally competent assessment is essential because it gives an insight into the risks of stereotyping and the need to value different clients’ individuality and uniqueness. In addition, I agree that when preventing diagnostic mistakes, paying attention to the client’s culture may go a long way (Sue et al., 2022). Besides, based on their similar behaviors to those of their White counterparts, clients of color often get incorrect diagnoses or excessive diagnoses. Understanding customers via a more casual perspective may help compensate for evaluation errors. Lastly, we can construct hypotheses regarding how a person behaves if we know the cultural norms and probable identity-related behaviors linked with specific groups.
Conclusion
Culturally competent assessment involves specific styles of cultural service delivery, using a person’s first language, and assessing an individual as a cultural being before testing administration utilizing cultural orientation categories. The essential elements of cultural competence are cultural knowledge, cultural awareness, cultural encounters, cross-cultural skills, and cultural desire. Finally, I agree with sue et al. (2022) presentation of my chosen exam topic.
References
Campinha-Bacote, J. (2019). Cultural compatibility: A paradigm shift in the cultural competence versus cultural humility debate—Part I. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 24(1). DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol24No01PPT20 https://doi.org/10.3912/OJIN.Vol24No01PPT20Jun, H. (2018). Social justice, multicultural counseling, and Practice: Beyond a conventional approach. Springer.
Stobierski, T. (2021). What is Multicultural Counseling & Why Is It Important? Northeastern University Graduate Programs. Retrieve 18 October 2022, from https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/what-is-multicultural-counseling/#:~:text=Multicultural%20counseling%20seeks%20to%20understand,patient’s%20relationship%20with%20counseling%20itself.
Sue, D. W., Sue, D., Neville, H. A., & Smith, L. (2022). Counseling the culturally diverse: Theory and practice. John Wiley & Sons.