American schools and the uses of shame: an ambiguous history

Abstract

This article traces the uses of and attacks on shame in classroom discipline, in the United States, from the nineteenth century to the present. Shame was once routinely used in the classroom. In American society generally, the emotion came under new attack from the early nineteenth century onwards, as demeaning and contrary to human dignity; the attack played out particularly in penology and in childrearing advice. In the classroom, however, shame’s disciplinary role if anything increased for several decades, in part as an alternative to corporal punishment. The larger cultural disapprovals of shame began to be applied to the schools by the late nineteenth century, but with inconsistent results. A more consistent attack emerged after the Second World War, and several traditional disciplinary ploys were dropped as a result. Parental disapproval of shaming rose as well. However, milder forms of shaming persist to this day, as shame continues to be a rather contested emotion in the school setting.