Spare the Rod: Punishment and the Moral Community of Schools

In Spare the Rod: Punishment and the Moral Community of Schools, authors Campbell F. Scribner and Bryan R. Warnick provide a careful, thorough, and accessible consideration of punishment and discipline in schools that is thought-provoking and, even though dealing with a concept in education as ubiquitous as punishment, often surprising in how it pushes and challenges the reader. The book comes out of Pedagogies of Punishment, a project that is producing scholarship on issues of discipline and punishment.¹ It is part of the History and Philosophy of Education series from the University of Chicago Press, which pairs a philosopher and a historian to examine topics in education. This interdisciplinary approach and the way the historical and philosophical perspectives inform one another make Spare the Rod unique in a landscape of scholarship that more typically approaches a topic using a single disciplinary lens. This approach lends itself particularly well to an examination of punishment, which in practice has been entangled with both the changing contexts of education over time and the theory of the purposes and aims of education and schools.

Spare the Rod has four main chapters, each written from either a historical or philosophical perspective, framed by a brief introduction and conclusion. Chapters 2 and 3 provide a comprehensive historical overview of the use and evolution of punishment in American schools from their beginnings in the seventeenth century to the present day. These chapters provide context and illustrations for the philosophical chapters, 1 and 4, which seek to better define and understand punishment and then provide a normative vision for its appropriate role in education.

In addition to showing the advantages of an interdisciplinary approach, the book demonstrates the value of theoretical work in education: take a ubiquitous idea or practice that is often driven by unexamined assumptions and unpack it in a way that not only invites theoretical engagement but also has clear, concrete, and immediate applications for practice. Part of what authors Scribner and Warnick do so well is challenge the reader’s notion of what punishment is.

Early in chapter 1, they describe punishment as “an explicit intent to cause children harm” (11), which initially appears hyperbolic and overly harsh but, on further consideration, may hold true to a greater extent than one who has engaged in punishment might like to admit. This is the kind of book that, in the words of the philosopher Jacob Klein (1985) describing an ideal of liberal education, “converts the known into an unknown” (162) and invites us to examine a familiar topic anew.

Spare the Rod is also interesting because it so clearly speaks to two audiences: academics and K–12 practitioners. This is evident in both the descriptive and historical parts of the book, as well as in the normative argument that the authors put forth. Historically, Scribner and Warnick argue, the practices of punishment have been at least as much a product of the structures and context of schools as they have been of any normative views on discipline. Understanding the contemporary context of schools contributes to the theoretical argument that drives the book: punishment has an expressive function that communicates a moral disapproval of certain actions. In addition to this primary expressive function of communicating disapproval, punishment also has “secondary expressions.” For example, the authors note that one of the reasons corporal punishment is deleterious is that it carries with it the secondary expression that it is acceptable to solve problems with violence. They contend that effective and justified punishment in education should convey the primary message of the moral gravity of an action without secondary expressions that undermine the goals of school. These goals are in part derived from the special “moral community” of schools and include the vocational, liberal, and civic development of students (97–98). A restorative justice approach to punishment, which is based in dialogue, dignity, and understanding as opposed to exclusion and retribution (104–105), best expresses the gravity of a moral wrong while secondarily expressing a way of addressing such wrongs that not only avoids undermining the other goals of education but also works directly in support of them.

For K–12 practitioners, this argument may resonate. But restorative practices are not always easy to implement, and it may feel frustrating in that it sets an ideal that is very easy to fall short of—a shortfall for which the individual teacher is often blamed. A general critique of punishment in education is that if teachers make their lessons more interesting, and schools are more culturally and developmentally sensitive to students, there is no need for punishment at all. Scribner and Warnick complicate this view, noting that, in reality, “teachers often lack the resources and support that they need, and a turn to harsh punishment should not be surprising under such conditions” (100). Punishment cannot be understood without considering the context of education and the external demands placed on teachers.

This argument is supported by history. Chapter 2 outlines the development of early schools and the prominence of corporal punishment. At least partially responsible for the common use of harsh and physical punishments were the extremely difficult conditions in which these first teachers found themselves. The sharp decline in the prominence of corporal punishment came less as a result of a psychic or philosophical shift and was far more a result of changing structures and bureaucracies of education. When the conditions changed, so did the punishments.

But even if current teachers find themselves in conditions where they are not able to enact the ideal the authors lay out, there can be no doubt that reading Spare the Rod will have a profound impact on how they think about punishment and engage with their students. For example, two takeaways could have immediate application in teachers’ practices. The first is a heightened awareness of the secondary expressions of even common disciplinary or classroom management practices. The second is the complication and challenge of the types of behaviors that warrant punishment, which may lead to a reconsideration of when and for what a teacher holds their students accountable.

This second pragmatic value for teachers is also an example of how the authors’ arguments invite questions and engagement on a theoretical level. Take the connection between the goals of schooling and the expressive power of punishment. Punishment involves not only the method of the punishment itself but also the antecedent decision about the types of actions that are deemed as requiring punishment. Early in the book, the authors reference a distinction made by Joan Goodman between behavior that violates moral norms and behavior that violates “conventional” norms (13). A problem with punishment that can lead to the significant disproportionalities based on gender and race (which the authors note throughout) springs from the enforcement of conventional norms, which are often little more than those of the dominant culture. Punishment for violations of conventional norms, especially those that can be viewed as arbitrary to some extent (e.g., no talking when in line) might seem particularly unjustified. This is at least in part because they undermine a part of the liberal goal of education that involves the cultivation or support of students’ autonomy. The authors argue that “a liberal education strives to help students see themselves as actors who can make responsible choices for themselves about how to live. It involves telling one’s story, admitting mistakes, and taking responsibility for those mistakes in order to make things right” (109). Rules and punishment that appear arbitrary make this goal more difficult for students to achieve.

However, I believe a question worth asking is, Can it be compatible with the moral community and educational mission of schools for punishment to sometimes express the message that there are reasonable limits to our autonomy, even if those limits might not seem reasonable to us at the time? In other words, is there value in learning that sometimes in life we have to follow arbitrary rules and that we can face the prospect of punishment for not doing so? This question is not a critique; instead, it highlights an aspect of the expressive power of punishment that is left unexplored in the book. Scribner and Warnick note that autonomy is a controversial educational aim, but, still, their argument is heavily anchored in the autonomy-supporting aims of the liberal aspects of education. I wonder if this account is an overstatement of the value of an overly broad conception of autonomy cultivation as a goal of education. It is not always the case that decisions made autonomously are superior to those we might see as being directed by others (Hand, 2006, 539). Hand (2006) notes that it might make sense to defer one’s autonomous action or judgment in the case of an imbalance of expertise (following the instructions of a doctor) and when it makes sense to do so for organizational efficiency (following an employer’s routines and schedules) (538). Part of learning to understand one’s autonomy, and even embrace it, seems to be learning that there are limits to that autonomy, and sometimes those limits seem arbitrary or even unjust. There might be some ideal function of punishment that communicates this idea in a way that, although not always palatable, can avoid being disempowering.

Although this is an area that could have been more deeply explored in the book, I offer it here less in the spirit of a critique and more as an example of the many ways that Spare the Rod invites additional consideration on the topic of punishment in schools. The book is a deep engagement with the fairly narrow topic of punishment in schools that is approachable and appealing to a very broad audience—historians and theorists, academics and practitioners— and all will take away something of value.

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