Some people refer to schools as kids’ second homes because of how much time they spend there. As a “second home,” children learn more than just reading and math; they learn how to interact with others, how to regulate emotion and behaviors, and what healthy relationships look like with both peers and authority. So if a school uses harsh punishment, this impacts the child more than just in that moment—it can impact the child for a lifetime, in terms of how they view authority, the identity they develop, and what behavior is “normal” in relationships. That’s why many were appalled upon learning about one elementary school located about 30 minutes outside St. Louis, in Illinois, that put a boy in a box as punishment every day for more than a month before the mother found out.
The School that Put a Boy in a Box as Punishment
In 2016, Melody Haller enrolled her son in the second grade at Alhambra Elementary School, located in Alhambra, Illinois. Yet, after three months of her eight-year-old child, she learned the school was enforcing harsh punishment on her son. According to the mom, initially, the child was being punished for talking too much to his classmates. The boy’s desk was moved away from the other children’s desks, and the teacher had put a cardboard box around him to cut him off from other classmates, and to keep him from talking.
Haller said, “A box has been put around him where he can see no students, no teacher, only the board.”
The child was put in a box like this for eight hours a day more than a month before his mother found out, but that was not all.
Haller’s son also was required to finish his lunch in the principal’s office, and his privileges to go to recess were sometimes revoked. The boy told his mother that the principal had also had him clean the water fountains and some of the walls in the school as a punishment instead of going to recess.
Find out more about the story and see photos of the box on this news report out of St. Louis:
Read on to find out how the mom found out this was happening…
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