Page 60 - SOMERVILLE SCHOOL GREATER NOIDA

REWARD OR PUNISHMENT : WHICH IS

MORE EFFECTIVE ?

“You can change a man physically, but it is the changing of the mind that really matters.”

In our everyday life, we come across crimes that are heinous and crimes that must get the

punishment the times these criminals are from the deprived sections of the Indian society

which compel them even more to commit those crimes.

Reward and punishment can be treated as two sides of the same coin and more importantly,

they are not always related to heinous crimes. They come into play whenever a person

does a wrong thing, deliberately or not. Both reward and punishment have their own pros

and cons and both must be carried out in a controlled manner. Giving ample amount of

appreciation and rewards to one may boost the morale of the person but it ultimately

makes the person arrogant and may see his peers as inferiors. Similarly, if punishment is

pushed way too forward it ends up in becoming the reason for depression, sadness and

what not. Only recently a seven-year-old boy in Delhi committed suicide as his class

teacher punished him brutally every day and that’s something! Moreover, excess of

anything is wrong and, in this case, even lack of it can have severe consequences.

In a nutshell, both ‘reward and punishment’ are equally effective in different in their own

different ways and both have equal but opposite impact on an individual.

“Punish the sin, not the sinner.”

-Kashik Sen (XII-C)