“Detention” may be something that is familiar to all who have been through secondary school. When I ask my cousin who’s teaching in a secondary school what she does to discipline students who refuse to do their homework, she mentions “detention” as the most common punishment, and “informing parents” as the next avenue.

Unlike most of my counterparts however, “detention” and “school discipline” as a whole wasn’t a familiar topic for me back in secondary school.

As I’ve mentioned before, I came from a top girls’ school in Singapore. At the age of 13-16, my schoolmates were all bright, ambitious students, who were too busy with schoolwork, after-school tuition lessons, projects and other extracurricular activities, to even cause any disciplinary trouble. When I told my cousin that actively consulting teachers and seeking remedial lessons was a norm among my schoolmates, she was so surprised because she told me that her students would never do that.

We didn’t have a discipline master/mistress in my secondary school, and “detention” wasn’t even a punishment until I was in secondary three. The teachers rarely had to deal with major offences. In order to stop students from eating in classrooms, they implemented a “Tuesday cleaning crew” punishment, where students who committed the offence had to empty all the rubbish bins in every classroom on Tuesday. The worst offence that I witnessed my a schoolmate commit was being late for eleven times in one term. She was threatened with suspension, and told to report to the school office for a month to ensure that she arrived on time, but in the end, nothing serious happened to her. Of course cheating in exams was viewed as an extremely serious offence. But that’s about it. We didn’t have school fights, canings, bullying etc. that’s part of everyday life in other schools. While my friends from other schools told me that “detention” involved sitting in a classroom doing nothing, our school’s version of “detention” was just sitting in a library under the supervision of a teacher, doing whatever work that a student wanted to do, which was something most students did after school anyway. When it was first implemented, most of us thought of it as a joke, much less a form of “punishment”.

As a student, I felt that the school had a lot of faith in us, and it was great to have our teachers completely devoting their time and energy to developing us intellectually, rather than spending time meting out punishments. In China, there is a saying that goes, “top-tier schools focus on scholastic development, second-tier schools focus on technical skills, bottom-tier schools focus on discipline”. It laments the amount of time and school resources bottom-tier schools devote to enforcing discipline, and I think it really is applicable in this context.

But that doesn’t mean I am inexperienced in the topic of school discipline. When I moved on to JC (a top school as well), I was dismayed at how much stricter the school discipline was compared to secondary school, even though we were older. I despised the rigid school rules, always scoffing at how the school claimed that they wanted to treat us as “young adults”, yet impose all sorts of rules akin to those a prisoner was subject to. Attire checks were conducted all the time, and we weren’t allowed to tailor our school uniforms, wear shoes with bright colours. We had to tap our cards to clock in before 7.45am every morning plus appear at the school assembly, or we will be considered late and given two demerit points. We couldn’t leave school without official permission before 1pm, even if we were done with lessons for the day, neither could we come late if we didn’t have lessons in the morning. Mind you, we were 17 and 18 years old then. Our peers in polytechnics didn’t have to wear school uniforms or attend school assemblies. Attendance at lectures were optional for them, just like in university.

As the school year dragged on, I realised what a rare breed my secondary schoolmates were. Even with such strict rules imposed, my class had serious attendance and punctuality problems in JC1.

Classmate A would stroll in nonchalantly at 9am, claiming that he needed 9 hours of “beauty sleep”.

Classmate B would only attend his favourite Math lessons, and skip all the GP lessons. There was once GP was right after Math, and he dashed out of the classroom after Math ended. My pregnant GP teacher saw him and chased after him, trying to get him back into class. Eventually, he accumulated over 40 demerit points and was almost expelled, but the school gave him another chance and he stayed on. His project work groupmates lodged a report against him for slacking off and not doing his part. In the end, his group got B and according to exam board rules, he had to get a grade lower than the rest. I think he got a C for project work. I have never heard of anyone other than him who got a C for project work.

Classmate C was a scholar from China. Apparently, she had relationship/family problems. Gradually, she started appearing in school approximately once a week even though she stayed in the school’s hostel, so much so that her friends got extremely sick of collecting her homework for her, since she hardly ever appeared anyway. In the end, her scholarship got revoked and she had to return to China. Her friends told me that her parents had saved up to buy a house, but had to use that money to pay the fees incurred from breaking a scholarship bond. Tragic story.

Classmate D attended school, but was perpetually in the sick bay. I always wondered why she even bothered attending school in the first place. The visits to the sick bay was so frequent that whenever our teacher asked where she was, the automatic answer was “sick bay”. But afterwards, I learnt that she was coping with severe depression.

Eventually, classmates B, C and D all left my class along with another classmate, while classmate A dropped one subject entirely. My class dynamics really changed drastically in JC2, but that’s beside the point.

So you can see, my JC1 class was full of interesting characters. Despite the strict school rules, they either knowingly flouted them or just plainly ignored them. JC1 life was way more dramatic than my four years of secondary school combined, though if I had the choice, I would have preferred the quiet, less eventful life we had in secondary school where teachers didn’t have to deal with disciplinary issues. Even if these few individuals made school life more eventful, the constant absence and flouting of school rules by these few people really disrupted the rest of the class quite a bit.

As a whole, I support school discipline. School is after all an education institution, where not only knowledge is imparted, but character is built. If given a choice, I’m sure most teenagers would prefer engaging in other more interesting activities such as sports and games, much less wake up before dawn every day and drag their fatigue bodies to school. But I’m sure most teenagers who worked hard and achieved good results would one day look back and thank their parents or teachers who relentlessly coerced, encouraged or nagged at them to complete their schoolwork day after day, because teenagers don’t always know what’s best for themselves. For most kids from middle-class families, education is the social leveller, and one of the only few pathways which would open up doors for them.

There are however times when school discipline is really overdone. Yes, I understand that dress codes and proper attire rules are necessary so that students will not be distracted and can all focus on their studies. But over-restrictive attire rules not only stifle creativity, but also make students feel oppressed. With school starting so early in the morning, many students have to wake up before dawn just to get to school on time. Back in secondary school, I woke up at 5.50am on normal school days, and even earlier during exam periods. It was only after I graduated that the school decided that lessons would start one hour later every day. Even adults don’t start work that early, so shouldn’t we be more lenient with students who struggle to wake up on time, or are stuck in traffic jams on their way to school?

Honestly, many adults look back on their school days fondly, because those were carefree days. Perhaps part of the fun was flouting school rules and not getting caught. But even as we reminisce on those times, maybe we should reconsider whether the next generation really needs to be subjected to such stifling rules.