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Restorative circles

This new approach to discipline may be coming to your school. Here's why you should be wary

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Originally published in Today's Parent June 2011

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Have you heard about restorative circles yet? If not, you will because they’re one of the latest passions in education.

Restorative circles are a new approach to discipline that brings together offenders and victims, their parents and school staff in a carefully structured and guided meeting where everyone gets to have their say. The goal is to help wrongdoers understand the impact of their actions and repair the harm they’ve done. Restorative circles can be used, usually with children aged 12 and up, for various significant but not highly serious cases of vandalism, assault, theft or rule breaking. They’re one aspect of restorative practice, which is a broader approach to building community, communication skills and good behaviour in schools.

At first glance, it’s hard not to like this idea. Discipline should be about teaching, not punishment. And helping children understand how their actions affect others is absolutely fundamental to building moral people.

So why am I so uneasy about restorative circles? It’s mainly because I’ve seen so many good ideas go awry. For teaching literacy, whole language was a useful approach that got a bad name because it was never really carried out properly, and certain ideologues thought whole language meant suppressing phonics (wrong!). Self-esteem became all but a dirty word because many of its cheerleaders didn’t understand what self-esteem really is or how it develops. (Hint: It doesn’t come from telling kids everything they do is great!)

Educators have this way of falling in love with new ideas and using them before they really know what they’re doing. I fear we will see the same fools-rush-in phenomenon with restorative circles.

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