I am the developer of a very big Madrasah management software that was shared on this forum as well with an official account.
Within the software we have given the ability to submit and track feature requests. One of the features requested today is a tricky one because it goes against my strong opinion about detentions in schools. The feature is to log and record detentions given to students and provide stats and actions.
The issue:
Detention is keeping a student behind after school hours in a room writing lines or simply remaining silent. Some provide videos to watch during the hour detention.
I believe detentions should be abolished in schools altogether. This isn't a new belief, I've always felt this way. I always told my kids never to worry about detention because the school will never get my permission for it. In schools they give out detentions nowadays for unjustifiable reasons and many times for personal reasons rather than policies or rule breaking. I have spoken to kids about this who explain in detail how even asking a question can get you detention.
Now I understand that in Madrasah the reasons will be justified and legitimate but here are my reasons for being against detention:
- Detention was created as a form of micro-imprisonment.
- The purpose is to take away freedom.
- To get that slight control above parents to keep their child after their allocated hours.
- I believe it's a form of torture as it's lengthy. An hour in a child's life is a lot.
- I believe it disheartens the child rather than teach a lesson.
- It's not from the history of Islam to do this to children no matter what they did.
- There are better alternatives that can achieve the purpose without causing damages that detention can cause.
- Teachers should act as educators, not disciplinarians for their students (online debate).
Prisons are known to do harm to the detained if the detained is not handled with proper guidelines like the ones set in Islam. School detention is similar. Many come out worse. School detention is not different. In various polls most answered that detention didn't change anything for them.
How it should be handled in my opinion as a replacement for detention:
- If the school has break times (play time) then take that away to complete homework or do extra worksheets. If it's an Islamic school then watch videos on Adaab/Akhlaaq or get a teacher to teach it who monitors detention.
- Suspend some privileges.
- Give extra responsibilities.
- If the child is disruptive, get the parents involved and give warnings of suspension because no parent wants their child to lose out. At the end of the day, a trouble maker does not deserve more attention than those who want to learn.
- I have used, "I can have you expelled and we'll all move on and the only one that loses out will be you. Are you sure you want to continue on this path?" and it has worked probably because the attention is taken away to a degree by simply implying they're no more special than others.
The purpose of posting this is to get actual feedback so I can consider the feature request for the management system. Jazakumullah
