I recently stumbled upon this Twitter post about a girl schooling her teacher about the rules of the Geneva Convention with regard to collective punishment:

The post struck a chord with me. As a (usually) goody two-shoed kind of kid, it always struck me as something of a crime to receive punishment for something I took no part in simply because I belonged to the wrong group.

Specifically, when I was in fourth grade my class went on a field trip to Knott’s Berry Farm. I was never so excited to go on a school field trip before, largely because we were to be visiting an actual amusement park. Hooray! No more sterile, boring museums. It was time for some actual fun!

The trip turned out to be less fun than expected. The first part of this was because the scope of our trip was limited to the “educational” areas of the park. Seeing as how this was nearly a million years ago, my memory is a bit fuzzy, but I recall walking around for hours looking at little displays of Native Americans (referred to as “Indians” back in the less enlightened 1980s) that were set up in the “Old West” section of the park. I assume this fulfilled the requirements of our teacher and our school for marking some curricular check boxes. But it felt inhumane. We were skirted around the roller coasters and other amusement park rides like leashed puppies being led around the perimeter of a a squirrel farm. No squirrels to chase today. Joy was not part of the California educational curriculum.

But there was one carrot being dangled that day. Knott’s had a building that was a replica of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, complete with a replica of the Liberty Bell. And also inside Independence Hall was a gift shop. And because the gift shop was part of this “educational” building, we would be allowed to visit it. Woohoo! . . . In retrospect, going into a gift shop was a rather lame “treat.” But remember, this was the Reagan-era of the 80s when commercialism still totally rocked.

However, at some point late in our trip, a few of the boys in our class misbehaved. I don’t remember the specifics of whether they were talking too much or throwing things or spitting, but I’m sure it must have been something horribly boyish like that. And our teacher was having none of it. And thus it was that she declared, as punishment for this misbehavior by a few of my male classmates, that NO BOYS would be allowed to enter Independence Hall. Or the aforementioned gift shop.

My little fourth grade soul was crushed.

And instead of going into the Hall, I watched from afar as all the females went off with our teacher for (what I imaged as) a grand Girls Day Out of shopping and fun.

And the boys? We were assigned the task of walking laps around an empty field of grass until we were sunburned and miserable. There would be no experiencing of “Independence” of “Liberty” for us. And to this very day, decades later, I still feel resentful about it.

If only I had known about the Geneva Convention at the time.

From the Geneva Convention III, Article 87, paragraph 3:

“Collective punishment for individual acts . . . [is] prohibited.”

From the Geneva Convention III, Article 87, paragraph 3

Yes, it’s a pretty piddly grievance when placed next to others. My grandmother had to flee her homeland from Nazis! But injustice has to start somewhere, and I don’t think schools should be adding it to their hands-on curriculum in such a way.

I can of course understand how teachers feel. Years later as a teacher myself, I admit I tried out techniques such as the old “everyone put your heads down” when classes got too rowdy. It made me feel dirty, though, and I quickly stopped doing it. I think it just gave me too many . . . Knott’s in my stomach.

Be kind, everyone!