Is it socially acceptable to shame your kid into performing better academically in school? Here's what one fed-up mom did to her teenage boy:
Ronda Holder is so disappointed with her son's poor academic performance that she's resorted to shaming the 15-year-old on the streets of their Tampa Bay, Florida, neighborhood. Holder said the last straw was when her son, James Mond III, failed even his P.E. class. That's when she made a sign detailing Mond's abysmal grade point average—1.22—and forced the boy to walk up and down a busy street corner for hours on end.
Neither Holder nor her husband graduated high school, but she says she wants better education for her son, who she says seems to have no interest in academic achievement. "You take the phone. You take things from them—it don't work," she said. "So embarrassing is the best thing. He don't like to get embarrassed."
How in the world can you flunk PE anyway? Link
It may provide more positive outcomes within the context of an environment home to much hostility, but that doesn't mean that it is any more effective than authoritative parenting in those same environments. In-fact, regardless of the efficacy of authoritarian parenting being greater in subpopulations such as African American communities, authoritative parenting still predicts better psychosocial outcomes (Steinberg, Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992; Steinberg, Darling, & Fletcher, 1995) The authoritarian parenting might work better in those subpopulations because of the cultural mileu, and continuing in that vain certainly isn't going to change the culture.
Still, I don't think public shaming is the way to go.