Discipline for Smart People    

We think in the box because it is the only box given us. That is, our thoughts almost automatically become restricted to that which is presented to us.The mother asks the youngster whether he would prefer fish or liver for dinner. Sometimes neither of the options is preferable, but we have a tendency to choose from these restricted options presented to us.

The more a person’s self-talk begins with, “Are these my only choices?” the more options will be discovered. A typical example is the oft-quoted question, “Is the glass half empty or half full?” The optimist responds that the glass is half full. The pessimist responds that the glass is half empty.

But the pragmatist responds, “You’ve got twice as much glass as you need.”

Invariably, humor aside, other options exist, and they will be discovered if the simple question is repeated, “Are these my only choices?”

 Print This Post
Posted In: Increasing Effectiveness On: September 20, 2007: 10:02 am: By Marvin Marshall

The behaviorist approach is to reinforce desired behavior and ignore undesired behavior on the theory that, because the desired behavior is reinforced, it will be repeated while the undesirable behavior will be extinguished.This may be true in training animals, but when inappropriate behavior is allowed to continue in the classroom and it is ignored, chances are that such behavior will continue. In fact the irresponsible behavior may even become worse because ignoring inappropriate behavior may encourage more of it.

Social scientists, in contrast to behaviorists, have a different approach. It originated form the so-called “broken windows” theory of urban decay. This approach holds that if a single window is left unrepaired in a building, in fairly short order, the remaining windows in the building will be broken. Fixing windows as soon as they are broken sends a message: vandalism will not be tolerated. But NOT fixing windows also sends a message: vandalism is acceptable. Worse, once a problem such as vandalism starts, if left unchecked, it flourishes.

James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling made this theory famous in their 1982 ATLANTIC MONTHLY article. They wrote:

“The link between maintaining civil order and preventing crime is similar to the process whereby one broken window becomes many. The citizen who fears the ill-smelling drunk, the rowdy teenager, or the importuning beggar is not merely expressing his distaste for unseemly behavior, he is also giving voice to a bit of folk wisdom that happens to be a correct generalization—namely, that serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked. The unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window. Muggers and robbers, whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances of being caught or even identified if they operate on streets where potential victims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions. If the neighborhood cannot keep a bothersome panhandler from annoying a passerby, the thief may reason, it is even less likely to call the police to identify a potential mugger or to interfere if the mugging actually takes place.”

When irresponsible behavior is demonstrated in a classroom and if the teacher does not call attention to it, such behavior is encouraged. However, such behavior can easily and quickly be stopped by having the young person simply reflect on the level of social development being chosen. In the vast majority of cases, the act of reflection stops the undesirable behavior.

Behaviorism ignores the “Broken Window Theory.” Discipline without Stress attends to inappropriate behavior immediately.

 Print This Post
Posted In: Discipline without Stress On: September 19, 2007: 7:36 am: By Marvin Marshall

The following e-mail was sent to me:”I am quite interested in the concept of intrinsic motivation and thought the process for raising responsibility in the classroom, as you discuss in your book, was certainly a strategy to be experimented with. I am aware that your ideas are based on research, specifically that of Deci. Has the strategy been tested in the sense of a research study?”

My response:

People who have implemented my teaching model have given testimonials, as you can see on my website. However, I do not see how the model can be evaluated with any amount of accuracy. There are just too many variables as can be seen on the Discipline Without Stress Teaching Model.

Each of the following categories would need to be implemented for a valid evaluation:

I. Procedures:
• Were the procedures for what was expected taught, practiced, and reinforced?

II. Principles to Practice:
• Was the teacher positive in communications?
• Where choices offered or did the student feel coerced?
• Did the teacher prompt interests and motivation by reflective questions?

III. Raise Responsibility System:
• Did the students learn the Hierarchy of Social and Personal Development?
• Did the teacher check for understanding when a misbehavior occurred?
• Did the the teacher elicit a consequence or a procedure if irresponsible behavior continued?

IV. Increasing Achievement:
• Did the teacher share examples of the levels before an activity and have students take a moment to reflect on their chosen level after the activity?

For example, if the hierarchy of the Raise Responsibility System is simply taught—but not made specific to the classroom, or if the teacher is negative or coercive in communications—then the model could not be evaluated with validity or reliability because the model would not have been properly implemented.

 Print This Post
Posted In: Discipline without Stress On: September 18, 2007: 8:36 am: By Marvin Marshall

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.Keep your words positive because your words become your actions.

Keep your actions positive because your actions become your habits.

Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.

Keep your values positive because your values determine your life.

 Print This Post
Posted In: Increasing Effectiveness On: : 8:12 am: By Marvin Marshall

“Logical” and/or “natural” consequences are not used in Discipline without Stress because they are imposed and, therefore, a form of punishment. The Marshall approach is to work with the student, rather than doing things to the student.It doesn’t matter if the adult’s intention is to teach a lesson; imposed punishments increase the likelihood that the student will feel punished by the adult.

While punishment may effectively stop misbehavior in the short term, there are often many unintended and negative side effects to the use of punishment. Any form of punishment where something is done to another person prompts negative feelings resentment, resistance, and even rebellion and retaliation.

A discipline approach that elicits consequences avoids these problems typically associated with punishment because students do not feel like victims when they have designed their own consequence and have been guided to a focus on learning from the misbehavior, rather than being punished for it.

By imposing a logical or natural consequence, the responsibility for thinking about the nature of the consequence falls to the adult, rather than upon the student. The student (as opposed to the teacher), should be the ones required to do the most thinking in discipline situations.

Adults will be more effective when they ask the student to generate a suitable consequence. By eliciting, rather than imposing a consequence, the young person owns it. People do not argue with their own decisions.

Here is an example to help understand the difference between a logical consequence and an elicited consequence: A young student has scribbled on a wall or an older student has vandalized a wall with graffiti.

In a school where logical consequences are employed, the adult would think about the situation arriving at a consequence that seems fair and meaningfully related to the misbehavior. In this situation, the adult would decide that, as an appropriate logical consequence, the student should be required to clean up the mess on the wall. The adult would inform the student of the consequence—thereby imposing the consequence and making it a punishment.

In a school using the Marshall approach of discipline, the situation would be handled differently. The teacher would expect the student to do the thinking, thus allowing the student an opportunity to take responsibility for the behavior. Instead of imposing an appropriate consequence on the student, the teacher would instead elicit an appropriate consequence from the student.

The student would be asked, “What do you think should happen now that you’ve drawn on the wall?” Because the student would be asked to think, you can imagine the student might say something like, “I should clean the wall.” The teacher would agree that this would be a suitable consequence.

Interestingly, in either case, the consequence is exactly the same; the wall is cleaned up by the person who drew on it. The nature of the consequence is not the important issue. The important point is that a logical consequence is imposed prompting stress on both teacher and student. In contrast, Discipline without Stress removes the stress factor because there is little if any negative feeling prompted by the procedure of elicitation.

You may ask, “What’s the big deal? If in both scenarios the situation ends up that the young person cleaning up the mess made on the wall, why does it matter who thought of the idea? ” This one difference is critical. Learning, growth, and long-term change comes as a result of thinking to oneself about one’s behavior and about the outcomes that result from that behavior. By being prompted to think about and determine the consequence of an inappropriate behavior, the student is more likely to make more responsible choices in the future.

 Print This Post
Posted In: Discipline without Stress On: September 17, 2007: 8:47 am: By Marvin Marshall

“I had the opportunity to do a lengthy interview with B.F. Skinner. I concluded that I do not subscribe to much of what he taught—for example, his rejection of all inferred states such as attitudes and motivation. . . . Marvin Marshall addresses a fundamental problem that every society must solve: how to produce individuals who will take responsibility for doing the important tasks that need to get done. Using some of the latest findings of social science, Dr. Marshall has developed an approach that enables parents and teachers to help young people grow into responsible citizens and live satisfying and rewarding inner-directed lives.” —Gene Griessman, Ph.D.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990) was the famed Harvard University psychologist who became popular with his practice of behaviorism, which is an extension of classical conditioning that is identified with Pavlov’s dog. It begins with the observation that some things produce natural responses. The dog smells meat and salivates. By pairing an artificial stimulus with a natural one—such as ringing a bell when the steak appears—the dog associates the two. Ring the bell; the dog salivates. (Pavlov was smart enough not to use a cat; cats, like humans, are too independent.)

Operant conditioning, in contrast to classical conditioning, is concerned with how an action may be controlled by a stimulus that comes AFTER it, rather than before it. When a reward follows a behavior, then that behavior is likely to be repeated. Today, we refer to this psychology as “behaviorism.”

Skinner preferred the term “reinforcement.” Skinnerians (behaviorists) are apt to argue that virtually everything, even who we are, can be explained in terms of the principal of reinforcement. Behaviorists speak about how “organisms” learn based upon the assumption that humans are animals—different from other animals only in the types of behaviors displayed. It is no wonder that, with this belief, Skinner conducted most of his experiments on rodents and pigeons but wrote about people.

All decisions are based on the ability to make choices—be it pigeons and pecking, rats and mazes, or horses and corrals. The trainer does not teach but rather sets up the conditions for the “organism” to learn by the decisions it makes.

IF YOU BELIEVE THAT HUMANS ARE “ORGANISMS” LIKE ANY OTHER, then it makes perfect sense to treat them using external reinforcers and other external manipulators. However, if you believe that humans have the ability to be taught using literature, stories, and other vicarious experiences—that they need not personally experience a particular behavior to learn—then you have joined the ranks of those who realize that HUMANS CAN BE TAUGHT. (I can hear my mother’s influence who told me that you train a dog but you teach people.)

More about external motivators and their ineffectiveness with people can be found here.

 Print This Post
Posted In: Promoting Learning On: September 16, 2007: 8:53 am: By Marvin Marshall

Discipline without Stress is the only discipline and learning system that is totally noncoercive. But it is not permissive.

Notice that the term, “system,” is used. It is an entire teaching model that can be The approach is proactive, Stephen Covey’s first habit of highly effective people. Rather than the usual reactive approach of waiting until a problem arises and then reacting to it, teaching occurs at the outset so young people always have something upon which to reflect.

Coercive (punishments) and manipulative approaches (rewards) are not used. Both rely on an external agent. Use of these approaches require an adult to be present. However, a person’s influence is judged more on what others do when the person is not present than when the person is present.

Rewards and punishments are different sides of the obedience coin. Rewards ask, “What do you want me to do and what do I get if I do it.” Punishments ask, “What do you want me to do, and what happens to me if I don’t do it.” Neither approach builds long-term character because they are based on an obedience model, rather than a responsibility model.

Desire, caring, integrity, kindness, generosity, perseverance, and responsibility CANNOT BE MANDATED. These qualities can only be taken, not given by an external agent. Rewards and punishments rely on giving, an external approach. Therefore, by their very nature they cannot achieve the success that an internal approach uses where people WANT to be responsible, WANT to put forth effort to learn, and WANT to the the right thing because it is the right thing to do, rather than what they will receive or what will happen to them.

More is available by scrolling past the cartoon on this link.

 Print This Post
Posted In: Discipline without Stress On: September 15, 2007: 2:27 pm: By Marvin Marshall

An understanding of each distinctive concept of curriculum, instruction, classroom management, and discipline is essential for effective teaching.For example, although classroom management and discipline are related, they are distinctly different topics and should not be lumped together as if they were synonymous.

Curriculum refers to what is to be taught. The curriculum is determined by state departments of education, boards of education, the “federal agenda,” professional associations, the community—and, more recently, corporate performance accountability models for learning.

It is the teacher’s responsibility to make the curriculum relevant, interesting, meaningful, and/or enjoyable. A first step would be for the teacher to ask the question, “Why should my students be learning this?” Then tell the students.

Instruction has two components: (1) teaching and (2) learning. The former refers to what the teacher does, the latter to what students do.

Good teaching of a lesson has at least three parts: (1) grabbing interest, (2) the actual teaching, and (3) reflection on the experiences for enhanced understanding, reinforcement, and retention.

Learning pertains to what students do to learn.

Classroom management deals with how things are done, how instruction is made efficient. It has to do with procedures, routines, and structure to the point of becoming rituals. Classroom management is the teacher’s responsibility and is enhanced when procedures are:
1. Explained to students,
2. Practiced by students, and periodically (when necessary)
3. Reinforced by practicing again.
When procedures are learned, routines are established. Routines give structure to instruction.

Discipline deals with how people behave. It concerns impulse management and self-control. Discipline is the student’s responsibility.

If, as a teacher, you have a particularly unsuccessful lesson, ask yourself,
(1) Was it the curriculum? e.g., I just didn’t make it appealing,
or
(2) Was it instruction? e.g., I had a wonderful lesson planned, but I did all the work; the students were not involved enough in their learning,
or
(3) Was it classroom management? e.g., I had a wonderful lesson, but it took 10 minutes to get everything organized,
or
(4) Was it a discipline problem? e.g., I prompted the students’ curiosity, taught a good lesson with meaningful student activities, had everything organized, but I still had disruptions?

Asking yourself these questions enhances a clear understanding of the differences between curriculum, instruction, classroom management, and discipline and is fundamental for effective teaching.

© Copyright 2003 Marvin Marshall
Permission to reprint this article is granted as long as the following link is cited: www.MarvinMarshall.com.

 Print This Post
Posted In: Promoting Learning On: : 12:33 pm: By Marvin Marshall

“All schools in North Carolina will implement Positive Behavior Support as an effective and proactive process for improving social competence and academic achievement for all students.” SO READS THE MANDATE.

There are Positive Behavior Support (PBS) Regional Coordinators to support implementation of this approach throughout North Carolina. Here is the link.

The North Carolina Positive Behavioral Support Initiative is part of the North Carolina State Improvement Program funded through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This act is aimed at helping individuals with disabilities. Unfortunately, the approaches used in so many special education classes use 19th and 20th century external, manipulative, and coercive approaches. Here is a far more effective approach.

Here is a simple case of punished by rewards: Susie does all the right things Nancy does. Nancy is rewarded, but Susie is not. Susie is punished by the system. Where is the fairness? Yet, this program is supposed to promote character education!

————————-

Here is another example from Carlette Jackson Hardin’s 2008 publication, “Effective Classroom Management,” pp 142-143:

The substitute teacher was surprised when a student asked if the class had earned a marble for the quiet way in which they had returned from lunch.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean that you earned a marble?”

A student explained, “Our teacher puts a marble in a jar if we walk back from the cafeteria quietly and in line. When the jar is full, we are given an afternoon with no work.”

Confused, the guest teacher asked, “But aren’t you supposed to walk quietly in the hall so that you don’t disturb other classes? Why should you earn a marble for doing what is right?”

The students looked to each other, confused at the question. Finally, a student tried to explain, “We always get a reward for following rules. Why else should we follow the rules?”

——-

The more teachers control their students through reward systems, the more difficult it is for students to become moral people who think for themselves and care about others. –Alfie Kohn

Positive Behavior Support makes a lot of sense until you start thinking about it. (As Dagwood Bumstead would put it.)

 Print This Post
Posted In: Promoting Responsibility On: : 9:17 am: By Marvin Marshall

“Life is a conversation. Interestingly, the most influential person we talk with all day is ourself, and what we tell ourself has a direct bearing on our behavior, our performance, and our influence on others. In fact, a good case can be made that our self-talk creates our reality. “After I wrote this as the opening of my book, I became more acutely aware of my own-self talk and that my decisions are based on how I talk to myself. Of course, my self-talk is determined by what I think. Chances are that when I think that I will trip down the stairs, without even realizing it, I have programmed my brain. In contrast, when I think in positive terms, such as how fortunate I am, my brain prompts a chemical reaction that prompt good feelings.

I am now constantly aware of how many things start with my own self-talk, rather than from outside sources.

The same applies to everyone. The vast amount of what we do starts with our choices, and the choices we make are influenced our self-talk.

Once you become acutely aware of this process—that your thinking and communications with others starts with what you tell ourself—your effectiveness will immediately increase. The reason is that any influence of others begins with ourselves. As the super successful salesperson knows, the first sale needs to be to oneself.

If you want to influence people, be positive, not negative. And that means your own self-talk needs to be in positive terms—not in negative self-talk.

 Print This Post
Posted In: Increasing Effectiveness On: : 8:21 am: By Marvin Marshall