Why Fear Still Fails Our Kids
Recently on talkback radio, one question sparked fierce debate: who’s responsible – teachers or parents?
Some callers were supportive of teachers and the difficulties they face around student behaviour, while quite a few were critical of society, imploring parents to stand up and take charge.
However, the number of people calling in who wanted corporal punishment brought back was quite distressing. They cited reasons such as, “It never hurt me,” and, “I turned out OK.” They argued that we need to put the fear back into our society because students these days are so disrespectful.
Many laughed and gloated that they couldn’t sit for a week or hands would have been chopped off if they’d spoken so rudely.
The radio host was pretty good and called out a couple of people who had really weird comments. Although it was distressing it was also quite revealing.
The conversation brought to mind an interview with Jon Bon Jovi, where the host asked him, “Do you look back on your younger self and feel shame and embarrassment?” He cleverly answered:
“Not one bit… I look back and see a young bloke doing the best he could with the tools he had at the time. What would be embarrassing is if I was still doing that today.”
Now we know better! Through affect psychology and behavioural neuroscience long term behaviour does not change because of fear. Being hit and beaten does not make you a good person. Being too scared to talk, explain and challenge inhibits your growth and development.
Living in a state of trauma and fear shuts down your neocortex, and triggers the body’s stress response, releasing hormones like adrenaline and cortisol that increase heart rate, blood pressure and alertness. Over time, chronic exposure to these states can disrupt sleep, weaken the immune system, and impair digestion, memory and emotional regulation. These physiological changes can lead to long-term health issues.
Is this the type of environment we want our children to grow up in?
Understanding that your behaviour impacts the people around you builds empathy. Caring about how we affect other people helps build a humane and loving society where people actually don’t want to hurt one another, and when they do, they strive to make it better.
Modern research strongly supports relationship-based, emotionally safe environments for growth and learning. Higher-order thinking, creativity and improved behaviour become a feature, not because people are scared, but because people are respected, loved and supported to learn and grow.
This is what we call a restorative environment. We focus on understanding why people behave in a particular way and how we can repair this when it happens. That’s right… we expect people to mess up and when they do, we support them to fix things up.
To the teachers I work with who continue to use a restorative approach – thank you!
You are making big difference to our young people, and the good citizens they will one day become. You are the rockstars of the education world!
Check out other articles Candice has written here.