Post # 1:
Consequences for whom?
When I share with people that I don't believe in rewarding or punishing students, I tend to get some very odd looks. The idea that a parent or teacher would not reward children for good behavior or punish them for being bad seems to many to be more than just a foreign idea.
Here is one of the first questions I get asked:
Don't you believe in consequences? How will children grow up to be good people if they don't know that there are consequences to their actions?
I do believe there are consequences for people's actions, and kids really do need to learn this, but when people imply that children need to learn consequences, they almost always mean the consequences to the child. If this is the kind of myopic character development we endorse is it any wonder how many kids grow up to be self-serving, egotistical, narcissists?
In his book Beyond Discipline: From Compliance To Community, Alfie Kohn makes the case that punishment actually impedes the process of ethical development:
A child threatened with an aversive consequence for failing to comply with someone's wishes or rules is led to ask, rather mechanically, "What do they want me to do, and what happens to me if I don't do it? - a question altogether different from "What kind of person do I want to be?" or "What kind of community do we want to create?"
Think about such a shift in the context of this commonly heard defense of punishment:
"When children grow up and take their places in society, they're going to realize that there consequences for their actions! If they rob a bank and get caught, they're going to be put in jail. They'd better learn that lesson right now."
The fatal flaw in this argument is that we want children not to rob a bank - or do various other things that are unethical or hurtful - because they know it's wrong, and also because they can imagine how such actions will affect other people. But when disciplinarians talk about imposing "consequences" for a student's actions - and inducing him to think about those consequences ahead of time - they almost always mean the consequences to him. The focus is on how he will get in trouble for breaking the rule. This fact, so fundamental that it may have escaped our notice entirely, is a devastating indictment of the whole enterprise. Just as some people try to promote helping or sharing by emphasizing that such behaviors will eventually benefit the actor, so the reason for the child to behave "appropriately" is the unpleasantness he will suffer if he fails to do so.
By contrast, ethical sophistication consists of some blend of principles and caring, of knowing how one ought to act and being concerned about others. Punishment does absolutely nothing to promote either of these things. In fact, it tends to undermine good values by fostering a preoccupation with self-interest. "What consequences will I suffer for having done something bad?" is a question that suggests a disturbingly primitive level of moral development, yet it is our use of punishment that causes kids to get stuck there!
You say you're concerned about the real world, where some people do awful things? So am I. In the real world, getting children to focus on what will happen to them if they are caught misbehaving simply is not an effective way to prevent future misbehavior because it does nothing to instill a lasting commitment to better values or an inclination to attend to others' needs. Most people who rob banks assume they won't get caught, in which case there will be no consequences for their action, which means they have a green light to go ahead and rob.
If we really care about character growth and ethical development in children, we have to stop managing their behaviors and start working with them as safe and caring allies. We need to stop seeing misbehavior as this thing to be squashed out and start seeing misbehavior as problems to be solved together.
We have to stop reacting to misbehavior by saying:
He has done something bad; now something bad must be done to him.
And we need to start saying:
We have a problem here; how are we doing to solve it together?
On a superficial level, some disciplinarians use the "real world" as justification for rewards and punishment as a means to manage children's behavior; however, real pragmatism tells us that working with kids to solve their problems constitutes as the only hope we have of reducing the frequency of misbehavior over the long haul, and our only hope for helping kids grow into caring citizens.
Lilian Katz summarizes this discussion up nicely:
Some teachers tend to focus on what is happening rather than on what is being learned. They may wish to simply stop the incident rather than consider which of many possible interventions is most likely to stimulate long-term development and learning.
It takes courage not to punish, and it takes real effort to see misbehavior as an opportunity for the teacher to teach and the student to learn.
My Comment:
Hi Mr. Bower,
I am a student at the University of South Alabama. I am currently taking EDM 310 with Dr. Strange and I was assigned to comment on your blog posts. I will be posting a summary of my comments on your posts to my blog (http://hamptonteriedm310fall2010.blogspot.com/) on November 7, 2010. Please feel free to take a look. You can also visit our class blog at (http://edm310.blogspot.com/)
I really like your approach to discipline. I have a one year old and I have really struggled with how I wanted to deal with discipline issues. I do not want her to act out or get into trouble but yet I do not want to punish her. I want to teach her the right way to behave and show her why her behavior might or might not be appropriate at that certain time. I think I am going to have to purchase the book you mentioned. Thank you for your post!
Post # 2:
Alberta's new math curriculum
Alberta Education recently released its new Math Curriculum, and I want to highlight how progressive this new curriculum really is.I am relatively new at teaching math; however, my professional development in this area has led me to appreciate constructivism, so you can imagine how excited I was to see Alberta's new beliefs about students and mathematics learning:
Students learn by attaching meaning to what they do, and they need to construct their own meaning of mathematics. At all levels, students benefit from working with a variety of materials, tools and contexts when constructing meaning about new mathematical ideas.
The learning environment should value and respect the diversity of students’ experiences and ways of thinking, so that students are comfortable taking intellectual risks, asking questions and posing conjectures.
Students need to explore problem-solving situations in order to develop personal strategies and become mathematically literate. They must realize that it is acceptable to solve problems in a variety of ways and that a variety of solutions may be acceptable.
This video on math is also featured on Alberta Education's web site:
Keep in mind though that its one thing to say these are our beliefs about math and quite another to have teachers and students actually experience math this way.
Walking the talk is the real challenge.
Making the shift from teaching math as a behaviorist to a constructivist will prove very challenging. Many educators will be reluctant to give up their right answer and algorithms focus. Frankly, many students who have been convinced math is simply a game that requires them to follow the rules may too be reluctant to give up the behaviorism approach. However, if we want to save math from the depths of education hell, we have to fight this good fight, and I'm proud to see Alberta Education lead the way towards a better way of learning math.
So what's next?
Teachers in Alberta are going to need a significant amount of professional development if this curriculum is to come to life, because I know far too many teachers who scoff at things like whole-language and constructivism while wearing behaviorism as a badge-of-honor.My Comment:
I have to say that I think this way of teaching math may work really well for some students. In school, I always earned good grades in math. The only problem was that I only remembered how to do the problems long enough to take the test. It has proven difficult for me to remember how to do most math problems that I have been taught to do. I think students like me would appreciate learning math in a way that it relates to other things we know. If we understand why we need the math and how it applies to our daily life and things we do, we could appreciate it more and have a way to remember what it is that we are learning. I would most certainly be open to teaching math in this way, but I would also be open to the fact that other students may need to be taught in a different way as well.
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