Protecting Student's Human Rights Against Being Punished by School

Abstract

   This research aims to: 1. study the fundamental human rights of a student who is defined by law as a youth; 2. study the forms of punishment undertaken by the schools, and 3. find a suitable punishment policy that shall not violate the students’ human rights. The purposive sampling technique was applied to students from 12 secondary schools in Lop Buri Province. The samples include three teachers from each school and six grade 1-6 students from each school, totaling 108. The tools used for data collection were tests, questionnaires, and interviews.   The results revealed that: 1. according to fundamental human rights, a student who is under 18 years old and defined by law as a youth is eligible to survive and deemed to have the rights of being under a guardian's care and protection. They owned the right to have adequate support for their development and the right to participate in any activities that the Convention on the Rights of the Child legislates. Teachers needed to have a good understanding of human rights principles and  a willingness to protect the rights of fellow students; 2. schools had no particular form of punishment. Some of those are physical punishments, such as spanking, commanding students to run, or other forms of punishment, such as revising the assignment, doing additional practices, or limiting their use of facilities. They were varied because of the differences in causal factors and the agreed-upon punishment terms; 3. a suitable punishment policy that would not violate the students’ human rights should be made with the agreement or consensus of teachers and students on both the conditions and methods of punishment. This enhancement would help the students improve their behaviors to be more acceptable. It would also eliminate the tendency for conflicts and maintain relations between teachers and students.