Everyone getting punished due to one person.

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What most of the people who utilize this style of punishment forget is that the other people being punished lack authority.

For instance, when I've seen this occur before in a college dorm environment, everyone was punished because some idiots made a mess. According to the staff, everyone should clean up these messes -- even if the mess is not their responsibility. As if I have the time to go cleaning up s*** I'm not responsible for in the common room. They also claimed we should tell other people to keep it neat. What a bunch of BS, I can't do anything to force them to keep it neat.

I got mad at that too. One kid gooofed off and we had to do exercises all period on Freeday Friday. I muttered under my breath that the teacher was "Dr. Evil" and nearly got detention for it.

This actually does, in SOME cases, though not all, make sense in law though.

For instance, say that loads of companies are abusing H1B visas and making Americans train their foreign replacements. Now, the total of companies doing this might be 10% to 25%. Suppose the government knows the percentage of companies doing it, meaning that 75% to 90% of companies AREN'T abusing it. However, they don't know who is abusing it and who is not and it would be a pain to spend a lot of effort to try and track every one down.

Now say that Congress makes a law saying that no H1B visas will be issued for a year till the system can be sorted out? Now, that means that technically, the 75% to 90% of companies that were using the visa system properly are getting punished with the bad one.

On the flip side, if they HADN'T acted, it would be unfair to the Americans working at those 10-25% of companies that ARE canning Americans to replace them with cheap labor foreigners.

In short, maybe, just maybe, in schools, the type of behavior of punishing everyone for the actions of a one or a few might be ok. (Whether they are known or not.) For instance, they used to let people go up on the roof of our like 30 or some floor dorm many years ago. However, after one guy jumped to his death, they decided not to risk letting that happen again and so banned going on the roof forever.

Another thing is, say a school allowed tackle football for years. However, maybe a dozen or so guys took it out of hand and people went to the ER. Not wanting to risk lawsuits, the school bans it for everyone.

However, acts of punishing everyone for the acts of the few in law can also be overblown and unjust. For instance, I think that about 99% of Americans use guns in the right way. A few use them to cause mass shooting. President Obama goes and issues these (unconstitutional) gun control executive orders that basically punish the 99% of Americans that did nothing wrong.

OMG I hate this so much! It's like, they try to teach us that we are only responsible for what we ourselves do, but then they go and blame us for something that we didn't do! I also hate when a speaker blames the entire audience for not responding. Like, it's everyone's individual choice whether to respond!

Just wanted to point out that this is a necrobump, so if you're trying to communicate with others by quoting, you may have better time communicating with the actual dead.

I agree: punishing everybody because of one person is not only unwarranted; it's cruel. I attended a transition program for people on the spectrum, and I had a teacher who would shame and demean the entire class if some people did poorly on a certain project. This was bad enough that some students had meltdowns; when that happened, she would give the student having a meltdown heck over how "juvenile" such behavior is, and use phrases like "that's not how a college student acts."

My calss was punished at least a few times because of one person which really irritated me.

The best way to teach that life is unfair is to be unfair. The best way to teach that those with power can abuse it is to abuse your power.

I know this is a very old thread, but the topic is as relevant today as it’s always been, so …

Ugh, I hate that too! It's one of the few things that makes me angry. I just hate it when things are unfair. I never cause any trouble! Or at least not intentionally.

I hate it when they do that. It's f*****g unfair and it makes me glad that I'm out of public school, among a million other things.

This has happened a couple of times. I absolutely believe in individual discipline only...because it makes everyone else feel bad that they got punished for not doing anything wrong. "Life isn't fair" my butt.

As for elementary school, there were a couple of lost recesses, several loss of talking privileges (don't know when exactly, but they were scattered) and several times where everyone had their heads down as a punishment (especially K-2).
The biggest incident I remember was PE class freshman year. Idiotic jock teacher, and the same one where two African-American boys bullied me and used nasty language at me countless times. We were playing a soccer game in class when the teacher called all of us up. Apparently there were a few people who were kicking the ball towards people's bodies. I wasn't one of them. He told us all to go run the track. I took a loss of points because I refused. I did nothing wrong, I was trying to play but the kids wouldn't kick the ball to me and I wasn't fast enough, much less did I ever kick a ball towards someone's body. He is still at the same school, has worked for almost 20 years, and is dissed by dozens of students.

Later on when I get my teaching job, I know that I will not use whole class discipline. It's a lazy technique, makes everyone hate YOU instead of the other student who caused it, and does not usually lead to a positive result.