"Detention"

What's the point of detention. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I've been written up in my life. Some people are in detention like it's a religion. For someone like me, detention makes want to never be late to school because its so annoying, but to others it must feel like some kind of hang out spot. Have you ever really broke down the reasoning for detention, or wondered if it actually has any meaning or affect to students? I think about the same thing every time I have a detention once in a blue moon. What is this actually doing for me? Maybe when I was younger, my attention span was so short that I squirmed and twirled in my seat so much that I never wanted to do anything bad ever again. Now I feel like it's truly pointless. All I do is sit here for here for 45 minutes and then I'm told I can go home. What's the point of that? It doesn't refine me in any kind of way, and it most definitely isn't going to turn a so called "bad" kid into a good one. They really should come up with an alternative to detention. I'm not saying just let kids do what ever they want, but I am saying they should at least be getting something out of it. I remember my first real detention in middle school. I went to Winslow Middle School and there had to be at least 700 kids there. There were so many kids that we had to get out of school at 1:30 just so there wasn't a traffic jam when the high school let out. My detention was for 2 hours all because of a friend of mine and his girl friend and I some how got involved. They made up us copy down the Declaration of Independence the entire time we were there, and if you didn't write enough, you had to come back the next day and do it all over again. That was by far over the top, but it was something different. After this year I probably won't hear the word detention again until I have kids of my own, so I do hope they come up with something new instead of these medieval forms of torture.