Someone gave me a newspaper article about teachers’ behavior in implementing punishment. This person just wanted my opinion about the right way to punish students. Well, to differentiate what is right or wrong is a bit tricky. It is contextual. But if you want to see punishment from psychological perspectives, in specific operant conditioning (a theory by B. F Skinner), you will see that punishment does not have to be physical.
When I was 10 years old, I was struggling with double digits multiplication. I vividly remember the incident well until now. To cut the long story short, I was called in front of the class with another 3 students. I only remember one out of the three students. One of them is N because she stood on my left side. There was no one standing on my right side. After so many years, the incident seemed like a dream, or more like a nightmare. It felt as if that incident never happened in my life even though sometimes the memory still bugs me once a while. This is what we call as repressed memory. Even though the idea of repressed memory is controversial, but in my case, it is as if subconsciously I purposely wish not to remember it. This is quite logical if we refer to Freud’s defense mechanism of repression.
I never met the teacher again after I left primary school. I know some of my friends had met her once or more than that. I feel there is no need to meet her. I still respect her as a teacher but what she had done is unforgettable. That is for sure. Someone told me that I need to move on. After all, this teacher already passed away. Lesson needs to be learned. Every time I teach a relevant topic, I will use that as an example of what a teacher should not do. In a way, that incident gives me ideas to be a better teacher. For that, I thank her (arwah Cikgu N) for that. Al – fatihah.