The situation
You lead a primary school. Three families, separately, report the same thing to you about a teacher with many years of experience and good academic results: when a student has not done the homework, she makes him stand in front of the class while she comments on his work out loud with lines like “this is what happens when nobody at home pays you any mind”, and on two occasions she has kept whole groups in without break because of a few students. One boy has started saying his stomach hurts every morning so as not to come. When you discuss it with her, the teacher seems surprised: “that’s how I learned, and my students are the best in the district.” There is no report of physical contact. The families are expecting an answer from you this week.
◆ The comment on each course of action is generated by AI from this section’s legal framework, whose official texts are in Spanish. It orients you; always verify the article in the legal framework.
For whoever facilitates
Facilitator’s notes
What the families describe is not a demanding style: it is public humiliation and collective punishment, two practices prohibited in so many words. The Normas de Convivencia prohibit verbal aggression, collective punishment and withdrawing break time (Art. 26, Ordenanza 05-2023 — the MINERD school-coexistence rules), and Ley 136-03 (the Code for the Protection of Children and Adolescents) prohibits corporal, financial and collective sanctions (Art. 48, Ley 136-03). The criminal layer exists and is worth naming without alarmism: intentionally attacking a person’s dignity so as to subject them to degradation is degrading treatment, aggravated when the victim is a child or adolescent (Art. 119, Ley 74-25), and subjecting a minor under one’s custody or supervision to degradation or coercion has its own definition, aimed at the officials and employees responsible, carrying five to ten years of prisión mayor (greater imprisonment) (Art. 171, Ley 74-25). Option a is the only one that protects everyone at once: the disciplinary sanction applies “without prejudice” to other liabilities (Art. 24, Orden Departamental 22/2023 — the MINERD code of ethics), and pedagogical support takes seriously the fact that the teacher is repeating the model she herself learned under. Option b confuses hierarchy with procedure: a conversation with no record protects neither the children nor the fact that the leadership acted. Option c punishes whoever complained. Option d turns academic results into a licence to harm. Question for the group: which practices “we have always had” at our school need this same review today?
The team’s commentary
Two readings of this scenario
Español — The Spanish version is the reference text — the legal verification described in the audit report was carried out on it.
Audit report — the independent legal review of this material, with the errors we found and corrected (page in Spanish).
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