Article: Students ridiculed by their educators. Is it a good way of teaching?

Do you think when teachers ridicule their students, they actually try to encourage them to change a bad behavior these pupils may have in the classroom? Do you believe this kind of treatment can help them have a better performance in class? Have you ever experienced this at school or even university? Do you believe ridiculing is psychologically harmless for the affected pupils?

The reason why I decided to talk about this topic is because I really hate when this happens at school or other kinds of establishments. I remember one day when I was doing my internship, the 6th grade teacher ridiculed one kid due to the fact that he was just not paying attention to the class. The kid was making some drawings that were not related to the class work, he was not disrupting the lesson development though. He was calm and quiet. What the educador did was take his drawings away and said “It is a very childish thing from you what you are doing!” Then, she showed the drawings to the other students and said “What do you think guys?” As a result, all his classmates laughed at this boy.

As you can realize in the example given in the paragraph above, the teacher ridiculed one of her pupils. Ridiculing is a teacher’ manner of punishing students when they either do not pay attention to the class or behave in a way which is not accepted by these educators during the lesson. There is more than one way to ridicule students. For example by taking certain belongings such as drawings, figures, toys away from them and showing them to their other classmates. Also, by pulling one of these pupils’ ears, making them sit isolated in a chair by staring at the wall, scolding or even hitting them in front of all their peers. This kind of treatment is intended to humiliate the affected pupils by generally encouraging their classmates to laugh at them. The educators involved sometimes may join the laughter too. After this type of punishment is carried out, the victims may feel sad, embarrased, weak or angry. According to the book of Chilean Educational Program for Stopping Violence “Maltrato a las Niñas y Niños” (Ana María Aran, Studies Center and Good Treatment Promotion director and psychologist) and the article “El Papel de los Profesores en el Apoyo de los Niños y Niñas Víctimas de Malos Tratos” (Jorge Barudy, psychologist), ridiculing is a kind of psychological or physical-psychological maltreatment (depending on the situation) and can even be categorized as bullying. The consequences of this action may be interpreted as bad behavior at home, academic failure, fear, low self-esteem, depression, somatization, that is getting sick just due to this maltreatment or even school phobia.

To conclude, I may say that ridiculing is an awful teachers’ way of punishing their students. I think this kind of maltreatment should be forbidden at school and the educators involved should be penalized or even dismissed from their jobs. When teachers ridicule their pupils, they are doing a great psychological harm to them. Furthermore, it is very likely this triggers students to have bad behavior at home and also adopt a negative attitude toward school by getting school phobia and therefore not wanting to study or work at school ever again. Teachers are supposed to be respectful and encourage their students to participate in class in a good way if they are not interested. One good manner to do so is try to arouse their interest with entertaining school material but never ridiculing them under any circumstances.