Naranya walked into the woodworking room, lunch tray firmly in hand. She nervously sat down at a desk. An older looking lady with thin-rimmed spectacles glanced at Naranya’s name tag and quickly jotted her name down on a piece of paper. Naranya let out a long sigh. She hadn’t meant to be caught. It was supposed to be a funny joke with her friends and nothing more. For several weeks it had been just that: a joke. Then, a random kid she didn’t even know had to go tell on her to a teacher. Then the teacher got the administration involved. And now Naranya had detention for the next five weeks. She couldn’t understand why. However, she did understand one thing: she wouldn’t be caught again. 

Adolescence is a difficult time in one’s life. Your brain is still developing and you’re still learning what is and isn’t acceptable. It is expected that you will make mistakes. However, another important part of making mistakes is learning from them and improving. One way to help adolescents is by showing them how what they did is wrong. This is often done through punishment. Punishment takes many forms, but one of the most popular forms of punishment in education is detention. Detention has existed since 1966 when it was made illegal to spank or hit children to alter their behavior. It was chosen when Harvard ran studies for alternate punishment and found detention the most successful. That said, in recent years detention has come under scrutiny. The University of California states “detention does not improve the students behavior,nor their ability to focus. On the contrary, it encourages the student to create new and more elaborate ways to misbehave”. (“Behavior”). American public schools are currently facing more misbehavior than they have since the mid 1960’s. Unlike in the 60’s when the misbehavior was an attack on a system, the average American was growing to view as more dangerous to progress, this modern wave of misbehavior has been caused by rapidly devolving adolescent mental health and maturity. Teen Mental Health.org, a non-profit dedicated to children’s mental health,  said “Children have not had the necessary life experiences to mature them. They are acting out due to fear they have about these unknown times.” (“Mental”). Rather than try to deal with the students' misbehavior by talking to them and punishing them specifically for whatever they have done, schools are doubling down on detention. American public schools have not had these many detentions since the early 1970’s. But the detention is not stopping the behavior. Dying trends are.

Back in September and November of 2021, schools were faced with the “Devious Licks” challenge. This challenge involved robbery, vandalism,and destruction of school buildings and materials. It cost American public schools close to a few billion dollars in all. No matter what punishments schools made they could not stop it. No amount of detentions could stop teens drunk on views. But then, without any warning, the behavior stopped. Why this sudden change in behavior? “Devious Licks” became irrelevant. It’s sad but it's true. Nobody cared about “Devious Licks” anymore and it had lost it’s time in the sun. People stopped, not out of a moral responsibility, but rather out of not wanting to be part of a dying trend. In this online age where we are arguably post-society, many adolescents put social media fame above all else. Students need to be shown that misbehavior is wrong, and in a way that impacts them. Evidently, detention is not that way.  I conducted did a Google survey where I asked students about their experience with detention and its it’s effectiveness. Of the 27.8% of students who have gotten detention, only 6.3% said that it stopped their misbehavior while 21.5% said that the misbehavior continued (Survey). I also interviewed students in my class more in depth. Of those in my class who had detention, every single one said that their misbehavior continued ,although teachers either didn’t notice or didn’t care. A few students even said that they have received detention for the same type of misbehavior multiple times. That is not how detention, or any punishment for that matter, is supposed to work. The system of detention is not helping students' behavior. Nevertheless, there are forms of punishment that truly work and those forms of punishment need to be prioritized over detention.

Detention is a broad punishment because it is not aimed toward a certain behavior. Furthermore, it means that it won’t won’t have the same impact as somebody directly addressing the problem. After a student misbehaves, a teacher, counselor, or administrator should talk with them. This authority figure should be kind and understanding while also asserting dominance. They should tell the student why what they did was wrong and ask why the student did it. From this, the adult can follow a mix of punishments from simply talking with the student, to having the students write a letter to whoever they hurt. To have the student pay for whatever they broke if they damaged school property. This way the punishment can be connected to the misbehavior. If the student is open about personal problems, a teacher might want the student to go to the guidance counselor once a week. These punishments have been proven as successful by Oxford and Yale psychologists. They are what should take the place of detention. They are what will end misbehavior.

Naranya walked into the principal’s office. She expected Mrs. Toust to look angry but she didn’t. Ms. Toust gently gestured to the chair. Naranya sat down cautiously. Surely now Mrs. Toust would explode at her. Then Mrs. Toust started talking, “Naranya, I heard that you and your friends had been making videos in which you pretended to be the teachers. It was very rude.” Naranya mumbled, “Sorry” Mrs. Toust sat like she expected more.  Mrs. Toust uttered, “Naranya the damage has already been done. You are going to have to write apology letters to every one of the teachers who you included in your videos.” Naranya was shocked. She had expected more than this. Suddenly, Mrs. Toust didn’t seem so intimidating after all. “Thank you so much. I’ll never do it again” Naranya  exclaimed. Mrs Toust smiled. “No problem,.” she said. As Naranya left, she knew that she thought about what she had done. She shouldn’t have done it. But she was going to right that wrong. She was going to write those letters the second she got home.