"So madam, where and what are your suggestions?"

I was reading the Sunday papers when I came across an article at Webthreads titled "Is this the way to punish kids?"

The parent complained that primary school children were punished by keeping them in class during recess for up to 5 days in a row or cancelling PE periods. The parent also mentioned that recess is important to the kids to avoid hunger pangs and asked if these forms of punishment acceptable and do they serve their purpose?

I was not surprised that punishments were carried out during recess times as we also do that in my school. We have a 30 minutes recess period and sometimes, kids who really misbehaves during lessons or cannot complete their work will be let off 15mins late. This is done so to give them at least 10 mins to buy and eat their food. They will not have the time to play and chat with their friends. (10 mins is a long time to eat!) Kids who decided to skip food and play with their friends and remained hungry should not complain to their parents that they are punished with no food!

For parents who do not agree to this form of punishment might want to provide some suggestions as to how the kids should be punished.
I'm listing a few of possiblilities:
1) After school punishment - Maybe clean a toilet (as a group), clears the rubbish in the canteen, etc (Kid will learn responsibilities, or he/she will learn things the 'hard' way. Isn't that what we used to do. So how have we turned out to be?)
2) Multiple but shorter punishments carried out during the recess time throughout the week? (Doesn't makes sense to me. Why punish them the whole week for something they do say, on Monday?)
3) Have parent counselling the kid at home on when to talk appropriately, why he/she is misbehaving. (Since parent feel that school is not doing a great job, maybe the parent should step in. But having said that, I believe parents should already been doing a GOOD JOB, right?)

(These are just my ramblings and my thoughts... Keep an open mind, ok?)