an ethical sea-change: a skinnerian punishment/reward model is a moral embarrassment, and it's often the case in the environment i'm teaching in that the only deterrent for a person not to act is the fear/experience of punishment. this is monumentally contrary to a civil, democratic decision-making model, wherein the benefits/deterrents of an action are heavily influenced by their social/interpersonal context; that is, i see growing in my students the decision-making pallate upon which the act of something like stealing is only undesireable in that one may (if caught) get punished for doing it, not in that there is (even if not caught) something unjust or morally corrupt about violating another (hence the nauseating mantra of "look out for your own," or "cover your ass," or "i'm going to get my own"). in this, cornel west's concern about a "nihilistic threat" is powerfully appropriate. furthermore, the perpetuation of a punishment-for-this and a reward-for-that model - sans social, ethical reflection - is entirely complicit with the dehumanizing authority that is infecting a strange diabetes of the soul; we are becoming overwhelmed with consequence, not embodied with choice - and at some point our faculty of ethical distinction gives way to a nihilism of unhinged self-satisfaction and self-concern. (2-13-2007)

 

Two months after that sea-change, my ambivalence and hesitation towards reward and punishment have not been resolved. In my class, I have emphasized that students make an active choice to participate in their own education, and that those disrespecting this choice will be asked to leave, and are in fact encouraged not to come to school at all. Though it seems an overly serious/impractical/unsympathetic approach - I mean it; I have little patience to babysit, to enact minor punishments and rewards for students who - by the fourth term in my class, their second, third or fourth year in high school, and their fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth year of life - should know how I expect them to conduct themselves. Actions and attitudes that disappoint me are merely pointed out for doing so, and in conversations with students that I have to take outside class, I emphasize that it is profoundly offensive that they cannot - as individuals within a community - respect the learning environment enough to refrain from doing things that will show disrespect of me and those around me.  Perhaps, of course, this is merely a re-imagining of the concept of punishment that I had just so recently disavowed, but it certainly seems much less Pavlovian. As for its effectiveness, it is neither more or less effective that when I used each step in my discipline ladder in a consistent fashion (in both cases, I would say that I have moderately well-managed classes on average, varying in moments from very well-managed to a bit chaotic). My only regret at time is that I haven’t done a good enough job to help students refrain from telling each other to “shut up” - a lasting pet peeve.

 

It is of course true that saying that students should know how to act by the time they get to me is the same as saying that they should know how to add fractions by the time they get to me - both ignore the fact that no one has taken the time to construct a learning environment successful enough to teach them to behave or add fractions, but I’m entirely convinced a this point that if we’re failing to cultivate a sense of civility and community ethic within out students, (a) well, I feel pretty much beaten to the ground at this point and would rather just teach Calculus than call RG’s mom again, or ask him why he doesn’t have a pencil, or give him some minor punishment for eating in my class or otherwise distracting everyone around him, (b) we absolutely need to have two competent people in each classroom like this - one to focus on teaching, one to focus on managing. Again, this is not to say that there aren’t some saintly people out there who can competently manage and teach a classroom, it’s to say that (1) it’s exhausting to do so, and inhuman to sit idly by while they perform this task day in and day out, (2) it is impossible to expect a critical mass of such teacher to develop within a population - either naturally or with intense training structures, so we need to stop expecting that.

Learning – to a large degree – is a process of interpersonal/intrapersonal discourse.

A successful classroom management approach should be able to frame a group of

individuals within a physical space in a way that encourages such discourse, and is at the

same time able to deter individuals or groups from leaving and/or disrupting the moment of

the learning environment. The moment of the learning environment is a moment of intellectual

activity, and the classroom manager is responsible for promoting this activity within an

 

 

~ I will not yell at a child.

~ The most important activity in the classroom should be the activity that I’ve planned for my

students - to ignore this is to be off task, and to pull others away from this is to be disruptive.

~ Students are discouraged from both instigating and prolong conflicts - each is equally

reprehensible.

~ People are not to use aggressive, violent, or prejudice-inducing language: using the

phrases “shut up” and “gay” are examples of things I will clamp down on.

~ I can not stand physical violence, even if it’s playful.