You can imagine the scene: Two schoolboys are behaving agressively towards each other in class. The teacher orders them to sit apart and the disruption ceases. Teacher breathes a sigh of relief. Sounds familiar? If you think that the teacher's intervention is the right one, you should think again, according to a former teacher in the United States.
By using either punishment or reward to control children's behaviour, we are sending out the wrong messages, says Dr Alfie Kohn. "In this interaction neither boy has learned to sit next to someone he doesn't like," he says. "They haven't learned to solve a problem or how not to interrupt other people."
They have, however, learned a lesson about power. The teacher has it and can make the boys sit where he or she wants. "As soon as those boys are in a position to have power relative to others, they will behave in the same way," says Kohn. He argues that in school and in the home "discipline is the problem not the solution. When teachers and parents use punishment and coersion to enforce their will and demand compliance, they are teaching bullying."
The more you use coersion, the former teacher argues, the more coersion is required. He sees the use of coersion and punishment as a recipe for an increasingly violent and aggressive society.
However, at the same time, "we are raising compliant children who don't understand why they should behave in a certain way. We are not teaching negotiating and social skills or responsibility, respect and compassion." The use of sanctions produces temporary compliance but it also produces angry people who want to get even and warps the teacher-pupil relationship.
"You become the enemy and the student can no longer come to you for help," says Kohn. Threats of future punishment are equally ineffective, he says. Children begin to focus on how they can behave badly and avoid punishment.
"Instead of asking `what kind person do I want to be?' or `what kind of classroom do we want to have?', children ask `what do they want me to do and what happens to me if I don't do it?'
Many people believe that the use of sanctions keeps children on the straight and narrow and prevents their becoming crimminals in later life. But Kohn points to `a gaping flaw' in this argument. "We don't want our children to grow up to be bank robbers," he says, "but we do want them to understand that robbery is wrong. Sanctions don't teach about right and wrong, only about power and self-interest."
Kohn is equally critical of giving rewards and lavish praise for good behaviour. "Rewards," he says, "compel self-interest as a preoccupation. There is no reason to be good if there's nobody to see it." Which child would you prefer, he asks, the child who shares her lunch with a classmate to prevent her going hungry or the child who shares her lunch in order to be praised for her generosity? Rewards and praise are simply "control through seduction."
Children need unconditional support and love, but by showering them with praise for good behaviour, we are telling them that we are only proud of them when they comply with our wishes.
Teachers, Kohn argues, are often afraid of giving up control, fearing that without it there will be chaos. But, he says, they fail to consider a third possibility - democracy. Coersion, sanctions and praise are all things we do to children to gain compliance. Far better though, that we work with them and include them in the process of making decisions about their learning and their lives together in the classroom, he says.
"Children learn to make good choices by having the chance to choose, not by following directions," he says. When problems do occur why cannot teachers regard them as mutual problems to be solved together?
"The teacher should ask `what can we do about this?' in a tone of optimism, warmth and concern," Kohn says. "Maybe when there's a problem, we should focus not only on what the child who doesn't do what he or she asked but also on what he's being asked to do - and how reasonable it is. Maybe when a student is off-task, the right question to ask isn't `how do I get him back on task?' but `what is the task?' Maybe when a student does something inappropriate, we should look at the climate in the classroom that we have helped to create."
The curriculum plays an important role in dictating good behaviour. When Kohn first started teaching, he was tempted to believe that his students stayed up all night plotting ways to make his life hell. But, he says, he realised later that it was the dull curriculum and his boring teaching methods which contributed to their high spirits.
Children are active learners. They need to learn how maths works rather than spending hours doing dreary calculations. Similarly children are not interested in learning grammar, but they do want to be able to tell stories about dinosaurs and spaceships and good grammar helps them communicate more clearly.
IF you ask a child why he or she performed well in a test, the chances are you will be told that it was due to luck, hard work, ability or the easiness of the test. But, according to Kohn, the best thing for a child to believe is that he or she did well as a result of effort.
"We often attribute success or failure to fixed ability," says Kohn, "but this is one of the most powerful predictors of negative practice in schools. If you over-emphasise performance, the more the students become focussed on ability - and this can undermine a love of learning."
