Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
The Limits of Teaching Skills
We are in love with skills. Not any specific skills,
mind you, but the very idea that children's problems can be remedied
by teaching them skills. The model is so simple and familiar to us that
we do not even think of it as a model. It is just common sense
that people who thrash about in the water need to work on their
swimming skills. Likewise, we assume, if children do not pay attention
to what someone else is saying, they could benefit from some remedial
work in listening skills. If they fail to lend a hand to a fellow
human being in distress, they need to hone their helping skills. If they
are reluctant to stand up for themselves, they are candidates for assertiveness
training.
But along comes early childhood specialist Lilian Katz to remind
us that most kids already know how to listen; what they sometimes
lack is the inclination to do so. (In many classrooms, they have to do
altogether too much listening, but that's another story.) Along comes
Ervin Staub, an expert in altruism, to suggest that we should be less
concerned with giving people instructions on how to help others and
more concerned with fostering a "prosocial orientation"--that is, a
disposition to help. And along comes Robert Deluty at the University
of Maryland with research showing that submissive kids as well as aggressive
kids are usually able to describe the appropriately assertive
way to respond to any number of situations. In other words, they
know how to be assertive; the question is why they aren't.
None of this is meant to suggest that skills do not matter, or that
many students might not derive some benefit from becoming more
skillful in all sorts of endeavors. But even where this is most obviously
true, such as in learning how to read and write, the question of motivation
may still be decisive. Children who are excited about what they
are doing tend to acquire the skills they need to do it well, even if the
process takes a while. When interest is lacking, however, learning tends
to be less permanent, less deeply rooted, less successful. Performance,
we might say, is a by-product of motivation. (The implication is that
we ought to be spending our time making sure classrooms preserve
and enrich kids' desire to learn. The call for "higher standards" which
typically skips over the question of how students feel about what they
are doing, would thus seem to be fatally misguided.)
Now consider attempts to promote respect and responsibility. Our
first obligation is to think about how these words are being used.
When some educators complain that children are "disrespectful," what
they mean is that children talk back rather than doing what they are
told. Similarly, it often turns out that a "responsible" student (or one
who "takes responsibility") is one who unthinkingly complies with an
adult's demand. Students are typically expected to follow the rules regardless
of whether the rules are reasonable and to respect authority
regardless of whether that respect has been earned. Given these connotations,
I would argue that the most pressing question is not how
we can make children more respectful or responsible, but whether
these goals, as currently defined, are even legitimate.
But let's assume we have in mind a more reasonable, less autocratic
understanding of respect and responsibility. Once again, we find ourselves
facing the limits of a skills-based approach. Most students know
how to treat someone respectfully. What we want to find out is why
they sometimes fail to do so. Apart from simple carelessness, one logical
explanation is that they do not feel respected themselves. One is
struck repeatedly by the number of adults who criticize children for
acting disrespectfully--all the while setting an example of precisely
what they are complaining about: they talk at students rather than listening,
fail to take students' needs and points of view seriously, try to
control students' behavior by dangling rewards in front of them or
threatening them with punishments, and make little or no effort to
involve them in decision making.
It is widely understood that people learn by example. But adults
who are respectful of children are not just modeling a skill or behavior;
they are meeting the emotional needs of those children, thereby
helping to create the psychological conditions for children to treat others
respectfully. I once visited a kindergarten classroom where the
teacher, about to begin a class meeting, paused to ask whether it was
OK to erase a childish scrawl on the blackboard. It is the accumulation
of such small gestures of respect that create a climate where kids
are inclined to act likewise--with the teacher and with each other.
Another example: a high school math teacher suggested that it
might be time for a test on Friday, and the students objected that they
were not ready. The teacher's response was to ask when they would be
ready, and after some discussion they decided to take the test the following
Wednesday. Many teachers would assume that asking their students
to suggest a good time for a test would prompt a sarcastic
response such as "Never!" But these students would not think of answering
that way for the simple reason (as one of them explained to
me) that their teacher respected them.
By the same token, if we want students to act responsibly, we have
to give them responsibilities. We have to provide them with a classroom
where they are encouraged and helped to make decisions. If students
are unable to weigh the arguments carefully, anticipate long-term consequences,
or take others' needs into account, that may mean they
need help figuring out how to do these things. They may have little experience
making meaningful choices. Indeed, the same paradox appears:
many of the teachers and parents who grumble that kids "just
don't take responsibility" spend their days ordering kids around--as
though children could learn how to make good decisions by following
directions. Once again, though, the question is not just whether
we have taught children a list of relevant skills, but whether we have
worked with them to create an environment where their needs and
preferences matter, where their voices are heard and valued.
Why, then, is there such a disproportionate emphasis on teaching
skills? First, this way of thinking implies that it is the students who
need fixing. If something more complicated than a lack of know-how
is involved, we might have to question our own practices and premises,
which can be uncomfortable. Moreover, a focus on skills allows
us to ignore the structural elements of a classroom (or school or family).
If students insult each other, it is easier for us to try to make each
student act more courteously than it is to ask which elements of the
system might have contributed to the problem. Practices such as
awards assemblies and spelling bees teach students that they must
triumph over each other to be successful. Indifference to others'
needs--or even active efforts to put each other down--may be rational
responses to a dysfunctional system. But it is obviously more convenient
for us to address each individual who says something insulting
than it is to track down the structural contributors to such behaviors.
(Likewise, it is less ambitious and more conservative to teach children
the skills of "dealing with" competition than to figure out how to eliminate
competitive practices. The status quo has no more reliable ally
than the teacher of coping skills, because whatever is to be coped with
is treated as something to be accepted rather than changed.)
Second, a skills-based approach is compatible with behaviorism,
whose influence over our schools (and indeed all of American society)
is difficult to overstate. Behaviorism dismisses anything that cannot
be reduced to a discrete set of observable and measurable
behaviors. This dogma lies behind scope-and-sequence approaches to
teaching reading as well as other segmented instructional techniques,
but its footprints are also discernible in character education, classroom
management, and virtually the entire field of special education.
Consider two children in separate classrooms, each of whom gives
away half his lunch to someone else. The two behaviors are identical;
the two children are evidently both skilled at helping. But why did these
kids share their food? The first one, let us imagine, was hoping the
teacher would notice and shower him with praise. ("What a nice thing
to do, Robert! I'm so proud of you for sharing like that!") The second
child neither knew nor cared whether the teacher saw--he gave away
some of his sandwich because he was worried that his classmate might
go hungry. Virtually all of us are more impressed by the second child's
motive, but a preoccupation with behavior--and, by extension, with
skills--distracts us from attending to motives.
Put these two factors together (an emphasis on fixing the child and
a focus on behavior) and you have what might be called the transmission
approach to learning. Here, academic instruction is construed
as a matter of pouring facts into empty containers, while character
education involves transmitting values to--or instilling them in--passive
receptacles. The emphasis on skills is reassuringly consistent with
this model. We know how to do something, and we transfer this knowledge
to a student so he or she can do it, too. To some extent this transaction
may be successful. We may be able to get students to replicate
an action (making eye contact while speaking) or recite an algorithm
("To divide by a fraction, flip it upside-down and multiply"). But
replication does not imply commitment, and recitation does not mean
understanding.
What's more, the student may be able to do something, but may
not want to do it. And this brings us back to where we started. The
management theorist Douglas McGregor once remarked that corporate
executives like to dangle money in front of their employees because--well,
because they can. They have control over how much
people are paid, whereas they cannot control how people will feel
about their work, and whether they will want to do it, and why. Likewise,
we educators gravitate to the things we can do something about,
things like teaching skills. Unfortunately, that process can be of only
limited use when it comes to helping children become altruistic or assertive,
responsible or respectful.
Chapter Two
The Trouble with
School Uniforms
Satire became obsolete, Tom Lehrer remarked, on the
day that Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. We
might add that the redundancy of satire is confirmed every time people
earnestly propose ideas like this one: the best way to help children
learn--or to improve their character--is to force them to dress alike.
The appeal of school uniforms is based less on the likelihood of realizing
any long-term benefits than on the nostalgic yearning for a
simpler and less dangerous age. To imagine that telling students what
to wear will bring back those days is to engage in wishful, if not fuzzy,
thinking.
For some people, however, the good old days symbolized by uniforms
were characterized not only by simplicity but by obedience:
those were the days when kids did what they were told and kept their
mouths shut. Here the question is not so much whether uniforms can
make this happen but whether the goal itself is legitimate.
If we want students to grow into critical thinkers and ethical people,
then we have to aim higher than mere conformity. We have to join
them in asking, "What kind of school do we want to create?" Thus, if
T-shirts contain slogans that offend us, or gang colors threaten to be
inflammatory, school administrators might invite students to participate
in analyzing the problem and constructing a solution. Apart
from being more respectful, this approach is also more effective over
the long run (and better preparation for life in a democratic society)
than issuing a decree ("Wear this").
Just as the proponents of "school choice" never talk about how much
choice students have about what happens in the classroom, so the advocates
of uniformity assume that the only objection to dress codes is
that kids want the freedom to wear whatever they wish. Overlooked is
the more substantive argument, that kids don't learn much of value in
an environment where they are excluded from decision making.
A search for data supporting the use of uniforms turns up a single
study finding that teachers and others believed students in uniforms
were more successful than their peers. But this suggests nothing more
than a prejudice on the part of these observers, analogous to attributing
various qualities to students on the basis of race or gender.
In the absence of real research, many news stories have cited anecdotal
claims, notably from Long Beach, California, where school uniforms
are alleged to have instantly produced positive results. However,
as the district's superintendent acknowledged to the Harvard Education
Letter this year, programs to promote conflict resolution, peer mediation,
and parental involvement have also been implemented there
recently and "it is really hard to know exactly what is producing the
positive effect"--assuming that a meaningful effect really does exist,
and persists.
Is it even reasonable to expect uniforms to solve the problems for
which they are recommended? Can violence be reduced by borrowing
an idea from the military? Can class differences be smoothed over
by making kids dress identically? (In any case, those very real differences
ought to be addressed openly rather than camouflaged.)
And what about the pressure some students feel to dress better than
their friends, which can drive parents to distraction (if not bankruptcy)?
This is just a symptom of a broader social disease called competition. If
we were serious about dealing with the underlying pressure on students
to triumph over their peers, we might begin by challenging school-sponsored
practices such as awards assemblies and spelling bees.
Complex problems will not disappear just because we demand that
students wear what we tell them. Relying on power to induce conformity
rarely produces lasting solutions. The alternative to uniforms is
not merely to allow different styles; it is to work with students to transform
schools into democratic communities where everyone's voice
counts.
Chapter Three
Beyond Discipline
A few years ago, I received a letter from a woman
who was working on a book about a progressive educator. She said she
was considering devoting a chapter of her manuscript to a discussion
of a program called Assertive Discipline, which was at best only indirectly
related to her subject. But she knew my stomach reacted the
same way hers did to the sight of marbles in a jar, or a hierarchical list
of punishments on a classroom wall, and she wanted to know whether
I thought she should bother with this digression.
It didn't seem a particularly complicated question, and yet the more
I thought about it, the more I found my response shifting. At first, I
was simply going to say, "Hell, yes! Help the hundreds of thousands of
teachers who have been exposed to this program to reflect on how pernicious
it really is." Assertive Discipline, after all, is essentially a collection
of bribes and threats whose purpose is to enforce rules that the
teacher alone devises and imposes. The point is to get the trains to run
on time in the classroom, never mind whom they run over. Everything,
including the feelings of students, must be sacrificed to the imperative
of obedience: "Whenever possible, simply ignore the covert hostility
of a student. By ignoring the behavior, you will diffuse [sic] the
situation. Remember, what you really want is for the student to comply
with your request. Whether or not the student does it in an angry
manner is not the issue."
As I prepared to write this to her, however, and as I recalled Lee
Canter's disclaimer in the Teachers College Record several years ago
that "there is nothing new about Assertive Discipline," that it is "simply a
systematization" of common behavior-management strategies, I realized
that it was too easy to single out one person as the Darth Vader
of American education. At least Canter is candid about the authoritarian
(and behaviorist) thrust of his methods. No one could possibly
confuse his program for an attempt to engage students in ethical reflection,
or to build caring relationships with them; teachers are urged
simply to tell students "exactly what behavior is acceptable. ... No
questions. No room for confusion."
But the same cannot be said of many other programs on the market
that wrap themselves in words like cooperative and dignity and
even love. While rejecting the most blatant forms of coercion, they too
are ultimately about getting students to comply, and they too rely on carrots
and sticks. These programs unhesitatingly recommend that we
dangle rewards in front of students when they act the way we want:
praise and privileges, stickers and stars, and other examples of what
has been called "control through seduction."
The groovier programs, following the lead of Rudolf Dreikurs, prefer
not to talk about punishing students. Instead, punishment is
repackaged as "logical consequences" The student is still forced to do
something undesirable (or prevented from doing something desirable),
but the tone of the interaction is supposed to be more reasonable
and friendly, and the consequence itself must have some
conceptual connection to the child's act: the punishment fits the
crime. Thus:
* If a second grade student is guilty of "talking out of turn, squirming,
and so on" he might be ordered not only to leave the room
but also to spend time back in a kindergarten class. This is a
"logical consequence" and therefore appropriate, as long as the
teacher strikes the right tone by saying that she wonders whether
the boy is "ready to continue in second grade" and suggesting
that therefore "it might be better for [him] to try and go back to
kindergarten for a while."
* If a student makes a spitball, the teacher should force him to
make five hundred more spitballs so that his throat becomes "increasingly
parched." If a student tips her chair back, "she can be
asked to stand for the rest of the period."
* "Each student who violates a rule [must] write his own name on
the blackboard"--or, in another approach, must have his name
written there by an elected class "sheriff" who is "responsible for
keeping the behavioral records."
Is it more reasonable to make a child stand for the rest of the period
than, say, for the rest of the week? Unquestionably. It is also more
reasonable to paddle a child than to shoot him, but this does not offer
much of an argument for paddling. Is there a connection between tipping
back a chair and not being able to sit in it? Yes, but does it really
matter to the child? The issue is not the specific features of the punitive
response so much as the punishment itself: "You didn't do what I
wanted, so now I'm going to make something unpleasant happen to
you." We would not expect the child to be less resentful (or less likely
to retaliate) just because the teacher used what amounts to Punishment
Lite.
In trying to answer the woman who was considering a chapter
about Lee Canter, I came to conclude that the problem is not just with
his program but with the use of rewards and punishments per se, regardless
of what they are called or how they are embellished. Even
when children are "successfully" reinforced or consequenced into compliance,
they will likely feel no commitment to what they are doing,
no deep understanding of the act and its rationale, no sense of themselves
as the kind of people who would want to act this way in the future.
They have been led to concentrate on the consequences of their
actions to themselves, and someone with this frame of reference bears
little resemblance to the kind of person we dream of seeing each of
our students become.
Gradually, though, I began to wonder whether even this was the
last word. Rewards and punishments are instruments for controlling
people, and the real problem, I began to suspect, was the belief that
the teacher should be in control of the classroom. If all these discipline
programs disappeared tomorrow, a new one would pop up like the
next Kleenex in the box if teachers were determined (or pressured) to
remain in control and needed methods for making sure that happened.
This recognition offered a fresh way of looking at my own experiences
as a classroom teacher, and at what I had seen in countless
classrooms over the last few years. Students are far less likely to act
aggressively, intrusively, or obnoxiously in places where the teacher is
not concerned with being in charge--and, indeed, is not particularly
interested in classroom-management techniques. I realized that the
discipline problems I had experienced with some of my own classes
were not a function of children who were insufficiently controlled but
of a curriculum that was insufficiently engaging. (The students weren't
trying to make my life miserable; they were trying to make the time
pass faster.) It occurred to me that books on discipline almost never
raise the possibility that when a student doesn't do what he is told, the
problem may be with what he has been told to do--or to learn.
Of course, none of this would make sense to someone who believed
the only alternative to control was chaos. Even if such a teacher found
continuing problems in a strictly controlled classroom--especially
when she was absent--that might lead her to blame the students and
to answer with more discipline, tougher consequences, tighter regulation.
And the worse things got, the more "unrealistic" it would seem
to her to give up control, the less likely that she would consider bringing
the students in on the process of thinking about the kind of classroom
that they would like to have, and how to make that happen.
No wonder the advice of Rudolf Dreikurs and his followers often
seems interchangeable with that of Lee Canter. For example, if a student
argues with anything we say, Dreikurs advises us to do the following:
"First, you simply reply, `You may have a point.' Second, you
do whatever you think is right." No wonder Canter recommends
Dreikurs' work and quotes from it. Dreikurs may have talked about
democracy, but what he apparently meant was the use of meetings and
other "modern" techniques to get students to do what they are told:
"It is autocratic to force, but democratic to induce compliance" he
and his colleagues wrote.
Classroom-management programs invariably urge teachers to
begin the year by taking control and laying out their expectations for
student behavior--along with what will be done to those who disobey.
But no child ever became more likely to think for herself, or to care
about others, in such an environment. To "manage" students' behavior,
to make them do what we say, doesn't promote community or compassion,
responsibility or reflection. The only way to reach those goals
is to give up some control, to facilitate the tricky, noisy, maddening,
unpredictable process whereby students work together to decide what
respect means or how to be fair.
To help students become ethical people, as opposed to people who
merely do what they are told, we cannot merely tell them what to do.
We have to help them figure out--for themselves and with each
other--how one ought to act. That's why dropping the tools of traditional
discipline, like rewards and consequences, is only the beginning.
It's even more crucial that we overcome a preoccupation with getting
compliance and instead involve students in devising and justifying
ethical principles.
And that's why I suggested to my correspondent that a critique of
Assertive Discipline made a lot of sense--as long as it was more than
a critique of Assertive Discipline.
