Carrot and Stick: Tried, Trusted, but Inappropriate

By Bill PagecloseAuthor: Bill Page Name: Bill Page
Site: http://www.teacherteacher.com/
About: About Bill Page ... Bill Page, a farm boy, graduated from a one-room school. He forged a career in the classroom teaching middle school “troublemakers.” For the past 26 years, in addition to his classroom duties, he has taught teachers across the nation to teach the lowest achieving students successfully with his proven premise, “Failure is the choice and fault of schools, not the students.” Bill Page is a classroom teacher. For 46 years, he has patrolled the halls, responded to the bells, and struggled with innovations. He has had his share of lunchroom duty, bus duty, and playground duty. For the past four years, Bill, who is now in his 50th year as a teacher, is also a full time writer. His book, At-Risk Students is available on Abebooks, Amazon, R.D. Dunn Publishing, and on Bill’s web site: http://www.teacherteacher.com/ In At-Risk Students, Page discusses problems facing failing students, “who can’t, don’t and won’t learn or cooperate.” “The solution,” he states, “is for teachers to recognize and accept student misbehavior as defense mechanisms used to hide embarrassment and incompetence, and to deal with causes rather than symptoms. By entering into a democratic, participatory relationship, where students assume responsibility for their own learning.” Through 30 vignettes, the book helps teachers see failing students through his eyes as a fellow teacher, whose classroom success with at-risk students made him a premier teacher-speaker in school districts across America.See Authors Posts (53)
 

www.At-RiskStudents.com

A simple explanation of punishment-based discipline and why it doesn’t work

Corporal punishment is a recurring, emotional, polarizing, educational topic that brings out name-calling, invented research quotes, profane pejoratives, law suits, debates on teachers’ web sites, and verbal assaults on teacher chatboards. Nearly half of the states in the U.S. allow spanking in their schools. Schools also allow less severe, more humane forms of punishment including loss of privileges, grounding, timeout, in-school suspensions, Saturday Suspensions, and extra work, less humane treatments, using shame, guilt, and stupid ideas involving duct tape and closets.

Punishment and its constant companions—fear, coercion, and embarrassment are at work or lurking beneath the surface of virtually every aspect of every kid’s school day. Even most rewards are designed to result in fear, anxiety, and disappointment for losers. Some teachers wield their “clubs” and some hide them behind a smile, under their desks, within subtle threats but always ready. Whether it is done with unwavering consequences, a look, a sigh, or righteous indignation, the message is clear and it warns of impending ominous dangers.

For Compliance: Reward Being Good; Punish being Bad

Those in charge of institutions including families, homes, schools, and government facilities attempt to control and manage the behavior of their members through rewards and punishments. To those people it is reasonable to reward desirable behavior and punish undesirable behavior as a means of insuring compliance. But the universal carrot and stick method has its problems.

The biggest problem with the “punishment and reward” method of control is that it works. It works to stop the behavior for the time being, but it creates its own problems for the following reasons and considerations:

1. It only works for the moment, and it must be continuously administered, monitored, applied, adapted, reiterated, renewed, strengthened, and upgraded.

2. Because people are different and because people change, punishment has different effects on them, and its affect on them varies and may continue to change.

3. We cannot control everyone on everything. If you prohibit your sixth grade daughter from wearing make-up when she is with you, who controls her when she’s with her friends, at the mall, or when you are not there? Is the fear so entrenched or so intense and debilitating that it controls the person beyond your presence?

4. Punishment deals with symptoms or outward manifestations of behavior, not with the cause of behavior. And, it doesn’t deal with variations, complexities, or with new symptoms?

5. Control is not appropriate for helping our kids become responsible. Teaching them is appropriate and important. Is the goal to make them behave or teach them to behave?

6. If your kids will do what you tell them; if they respond to your power of reward and punishment; why do you