Should after-school detention be banned?

Teachers should act as educators, not disciplinarians for their students

Question: Should after-school detention be banned?
Position‹2 of 2: Yes, after-school detention should be banned
Argument: Teachers should act as educators, not disciplinarians for their students

Schools are overstepping in their attempts to keep kids in line; schools should only be disciplining students for things that occur in the classroom and the school day itself, rather than bleed out into a student’s everyday life.

The argument

Schools are built and designed as educational institutions. They do not act as juvenile detention centers, nor should they be a second home for students. If a student needs either of those things, a blanket “after-school detention” is not enough of a preventative tactic. Schools can only hope to educate their students as best as possible and encourage them to be productive and contributing members of society. While teachers do need to have some form of effective punishment on hand to ensure cooperation in class, extending that punishment to after-school violates the boundaries of what an educational institution should look like. Punishments should be classroom-specific and discussed between a student and teacher, rather than applied generally to a group of misbehaving children. It is important to maintain boundaries between disciplinarians and educators, or students (especially at-risk ones) may begin to confuse the two and resent their academic careers, impacting their future prospects.

Premises

[P1]Schools are educational institutions, not juvenile detention centres, and a blanket after-school detention is neither an adequate preventative tool nor within the proper role of a school. [P2] While teachers need effective in-class discipline, extending punishment beyond school hours oversteps educational boundaries; punishments should be classroom-specific and discussed one-to-one, or at-risk students may conflate educators with disciplinarians and come to resent their education. [C] Because teachers should act as educators rather than disciplinarians, after-school detention should be banned.

Counter-arguments

It is unreasonable to expect teachers to be able to both teach and provide in-school detention. If misbehavior occurs within class, it must be dealt with after class to avoid further disruption. In addition, brainstorming new and effective forms of discipline, beyond detention, is another added pressure to put on teachers.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise sets up a distinction schools have never observed: compulsory education has always carried authority over conduct, and pastoral and disciplinary responsibility is part of what makes a classroom teachable — so "not a juvenile detention centre" rules out something nobody proposed. [Rejecting P2] The location of a sanction is doing all the work and cannot bear it: a detention held after the bell is not more punitive than one held during a lesson, and it is generally preferred precisely because it does not remove the student from teaching — while the argument's own alternative, a private conversation between student and teacher, is a form of discipline and so concedes the role it says teachers should not occupy.