What if a child is manipulative?

When compliance becomes an adult's ultimate goal with children, we will resort to, and justify, manipulation, which includes rewards, punishments, carrots, sticks, bribes and threats.

So what's the problem?

Show me a child who manipulates others, and I will show you a child who has grown up being manipulated.

Not only does the end not justify the means, but a well intentioned, but misdirected, means can ruin the end.

Here's what I mean.

Many years ago, I made a conscious decision to try and abolish rewards and punishments from my teaching and parenting tool box. (Here are all of my posts on rethinking discipline)

The inspiration for this move came from being a miserable teacher, looking for change. When I read Alfie Kohn's book The Schools Children Deserve, I came across a quote that would re-shape my mindset for working with children. The quote belongs to Jerome Bruner, but it has become my teaching and parenting mantra:

"Children should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information."

There are many profound reasons to adopt such a mindset, but here's one of my favourite.

When my students or son and daughter try and manipulate me with bribes and threats or rewards and punishments to get me to do whatever they want me to do, I can turn to them and honestly say, "I don't use rewards and punishments on you, so don't you bribe and threaten me."

When I call children on their attempts to manipulate me, I don't get into power struggles or arguments because they know I don't use manipulation to get them to do what I want. They know that I don't do things to them to get what I want -- I work with them. I inspire them. I don't manipulate them.

So when they try and manipulate me, I have the best argument for rejecting their manipulation.

I don't manipulate them, so I won't tolerate them manipulating me.

And they know it.

3 reasons to stop rewarding and punishing children

Teachers and schools make thousands of decisions, big and small, everyday. Just as we would hope that our doctors and hospitals are making decisions based on evidence and research, so should teachers and schools.

Should schools use rewards and punishments on their students?

Here are 3 reasons why schools and teachers need to stop using rewards and punishments:

1. We want children to do the right things for the right reasons. Too often rewards distract children from doing the right thing for the right reason. Instead of being virtuous and doing the right thing regardless of whether anyone is watching or waiting to catch them, too many children (and adults) will do good only when they stand to personally gain -- then we lament about why some children (and adults) become grade grubbers, praise junkies and bribe bait. We can't teach children to do the right thing with carrots and sticks. We want children to share and adults to slow down in playground zones not because they might get caught -- and yet when we reward and punish children to do the right thing, we teach them to look over their shoulder before they do good or bad.

2. There are two kinds of motivation: intrinsic & extrinsic. The problem here is that we need to stop asking ‘How motivated are my students?’ and start asking ‘How are my students motivated?’. Motivation is not a single entity that you either have a lot or little of. There are two kinds: intrinsic and extrinsic. If you are intrinsically motivated then you are doing something for its own sake; if you are extrinsically motivated, you are driven to do something, or not do something, based on a reward or punishment that may be waiting for you. But that is not even the interesting part—the real catch here is that these two kinds of motivation tend to be inversely related. When you grow students' extrinsic motivation by bribing them (or threatening them), you run the risk of growing their extrinsic motivation while their intrinsic love for what you want them to learn shrivels. Rewards can only ever gain short-term compliance from students when what we really desire is their authentic engagement.

3. To a child, an adult's praise and presents are cheap -- it's our presence that they value the most. There is absolutely nothing wrong with recognizing children -- problems occur, however, when our recognition is manipulative and controlling. Too often the children we deem the most undeserving of our recognition and attention are those who need us the most -- too often rewards and punishments rupture our relationships with children. My teaching and parenting mantra is borrowed directly from Jerome Bruner who once said that, "Children should experience success and failure not as reward and punishment but as information". This mindset lays the foundation for shifting away from doing things to children and moving towards working with them.

Further reading:

Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn

Why we do What we do? by Edward Deci

Drive by Daniel Pink

Levels of Engagement

Getting compliance from children is easy -- the real challenge is resisting the temptation to resort to rewards and punishments and carrots and sticks that will only get us compliance at the cost of engagement. 

Here are a couple posts on engagement vs. compliance:

Everything I know about engagement I learned in kindergarten

Folly of Coercion

Discipline is distracting

Rhetoric of Rigor

Compliance vs Engagement

Disengaged kids are inconvenient

3 Major Shifts Public Education needs to make

Working with explosive children

Here's an example of how I work with some of the hardest kids to educate.

Harry is an 8 year old boy in grade 3 who is very active. He is also very curious and asks a million questions a day to anyone he happens to be standing beside. What are those men building? Why does that truck have a bucket? Did you see that motorcycle? What's that sound? Why are we going to the library? Can I go swimming?

Some might describe Harry as a bad kid who is disrespectful, defiant and out of control, but I don't. You see the words we use create labels and labels have bias, so I describe Harry as a very active kid who thinks and advocates for himself in an effort to meet his needs. However, because he is lagging skills, he does not advocate for himself in a successful or adaptive way.

Because my classroom is in a hospital, the unit is often locked, so I have a identification badge that unlocks the door so I can come and go. When our class goes for our morning walk, Harry is used to using my badge to swipe and unlock the door. He thinks it's fun.

One afternoon, he asked me for my badge so I gave it to him -- then he asked if he could hang on to it while we went bowling. I said that I trusted him and that he could hang on to my badge for the afternoon. He smiled. I could tell that he liked that I said I trusted him.

Did I trust him? No, not really, but if we waited to trust Harry until we actually trusted him, we would never trust him. Harry will learn to be trustworthy only if we are prepared to trust him even when he is not ready to be trusted.

We went bowling and had a great time, but after we returned to the hospital, Harry began to search his pockets for my badge. A look of panic struck him like a deer in headlights.

"Oh no, I lost your badge."

Deep down I was not impressed, but I had to suppress my frustration and see this less as a crisis and more as an opportunity. "Ok, check your pockets again. Make sure you didn't miss it."

Despite my optimism, we both knew it wasn't there.

"Nope. It's not here. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I lost your badge. I'm really sorry."

"It's OK, Harry. You only need to apologize once. It looks like we have a problem. What do we do with problems?"

"We solve them," Harry replied with very little confidence.

"So how do we solve this problem?"

"I don't know."

"If it's not in your pockets, where do you think it might be?"

"At the bowling alley."

"Maybe. Could it be in the cab?"

"No. I didn't have it in the cab. I had it last at the bowling alley. We need to go back to the bowling alley, " Harry said with a glimmer of hope.

"That is one solution. I wonder if there's another way of finding out if my badge is at the bowling ally without actually driving there again?"

"We could phone them!" Harry was getting excited.

"Sounds like a plan. Let's go phone them together." We walked back up to the classroom. I looked up the phone number and Harry dialed.

"I wonder what you could say to the bowling alley?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Well, you could start by telling them your problem."

So I sat next to Harry while he phoned. I had to help him out at first. Basically, I had to script him and he would just repeat after me, but then he got the hang of it and knew what to say without my help. First he asked them to check the arcade, but it wasn't there. Then he asked them to check where he took off his shoes, but it wasn't there. Lastly, he asked them to check the fifth lane where we bowled and they found it!

Harry was so excited, he high fived me and was about to hang up before I stopped him and asked, "what should we do now?"

"Can you bring it to the hospital?" Harry impulsively asked the person from the bowling alley.

I started to laugh because he was so darn cute but I cut him off and said, "No, no, no. Tell her that I will drop by later and pick it up."

He finished by saying thank you.

John Dewey once said, "We don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience." This is why it's important for Harry to experience this kind of problem solving, and it is equally important to guide him through reflecting on this experience. So we reflected:

"How did we solve this problem?" I asked.

"We worked together."

"How did we work together?"

"We talked."

"Did we cry, scream, yell or get angry?"

"Nope."

"Would those things have helped us solve this problem?"

"Nope."

"Did I get mad? Did I blame you?"

"Nope. Nope."

"Did you solve this problem by yourself?"

"No. We helped each other out."

"That's right. We had to work together by communicating."

We high fived and he left.

***

At first glance, this story might appear to be uninteresting, but here's why it's so important:

• It would have been easy for me to see this as an inconvenient problem; however, the real challenge is to see the opportunity in this problem. Because Harry lost my badge, we now had the opportunity to work together in solving a very real problem that has a context and a purpose.

• Harry is explosive and has a very difficult time solving problems. Working with Harry to solve his problems like this may be the only hope we have of reducing the frequency of his misbehavior over the long haul, and our only hope for helping him grow into a caring citizen.

• The next day, another problem came up but this time someone wronged Harry. He exploded and pouted. He blamed and yelled. So I asked him if he could remember when he lost my badge. Of course he did. I asked him if I blamed and yelled at him when he made a mistake. His expression changed -- he calmed down and I could tell he was picking up my point. I asked him if he could treat others in a way that he like to be treated. He was agreeable. He still needed help problem solving but he was less apt to explode.

• Can you see how reminding Harry of my expectations that he should have taken better care of my badge would have been at best unhelpful? The problem is not that he doesn't know my expectations -- the problem is that he lags the skills to successfully meet my expectations -- so we use this very real unsolved problem to teach the lagging skills.

• Can you see how punishing Harry for losing my badge would be completely unhelpful and more likely to make things worse? There are many reasons why punishments fail, and in this case it would have done nothing more than make Harry mad and distract him from solving the real problem and distract me from teaching him. 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.

Here's another cool story on how to work with children who are hard to like and hard to teach.

3 ways to sabotage learning

Want to sabotage learning? Here are three ways:

1. Judge the learner. Whenever the learner does something, make sure to marinate the learner with judgement which includes both praise and punishment. Because grading can only ever be experienced as a reward and punishment, make sure to grade everything. You need not be worried about balancing praise and punishment -- because they are two sides of the same manipulative coin, they will both equally contribute to stifling the learner.

2. Rush the learner. On the macro level, make the purpose of learning a race to the finish. Convince people that the only reason you go to school is to get a better job than your neighbour in a globally competitive economy. Keep everyone frantically compliant by constantly reminding/threatening them that they might be falling behind. On the micro level, make classroom activities about finishing first. Time everything. In math, be sure to do Mad Minutes! and in all classes be sure to place a great deal of emphasis on due dates and late penalties.

3. Control the learner. Make sure the school schedule is designed with minimal input from the learner. Allow the learner to think they have a say in their leaning by letting them pick a couple optional courses but otherwise be sure to keep their input on what they learn and how they learn to a minimum. Learning should be fractured and compartmentalized so that subjects appear isolated, unrelated and irrelevant. Course outlines and curricula should be published by distant authorities and mailed to the schools. Lesson plans should be standardized by a PLC and laminated.

If, however, you wish to nurture and encourage learning, then consider all this as the anti-model.

Killing community with token economies

A few years ago, I wrote a post on Primitive Moral Development: PBIS, where I described a school that had teachers pass out green and red tickets for catching students being good and bad.

Here is a comment left by Julie:

My son's third grade teacher implemented a "positive rewards" behavior management plan that spiraled out of control and ended up creating a huge problem for her and for the kids. She too, gave tickets to students she saw doing "good" things or acting in ways she approved of. The kids were smart enough to start doing more of these "good things" in front of her just to earn a ticket. This program taught them to be sly, sneaky and manipulate around the teacher, but she was too caught up in the rules of the program to notice or even care.

The tickets became valuable currency in the classroom, because at the end of the month, an auction was held where students could use their accumulated tickets to buy toys and treats. Sadly, it was a real auction where those with the most tickets and those who shouted the loudest bought the most candy and prizes. 

As the year progressed, tickets were hotly sought after and thefts began to occur. Tickets began to disappear from lockers, desks and backpacks and kids began to argue and accuse each other. Fights on the playground broke out over lost and stolen tickets. Students formed alliances and groups to put their tickets together for more buying power at the auctions.
Behavior in the classroom deteriorated as more and more focus and time was put on the damn tickets. The teacher grew frustrated and was short tempered with the kids. The kids competed with each, fiercely and without compassion, to "earn" their ticket currency. The auctions became tense, ugly affairs with students shouting each other down and crying when they failed to buy what they wanted. My son was stressed out, anxious, and hated being in that atmosphere. 

The classroom had formed it's own little economy and it was ugly. We talked to the teacher to express our concerns and were told not to worry -- that this was what the real world was like, that competition reigned, and that our son was too sensitive. She also suggested we put him into a competitive sports program to "toughen him up."

Rewarding Reading, Ruining Readers

I've received a number of comments and emails in response to my post where I detailed how an incentive reading plan is undermining my daughter's motivation to read for its own sake.

Here are a couple points that I would like to address:

1. Unfortunately there will be a significant number of homes where there is no parent support or modelling for a love of reading, and even more unfortunate, no shared reading times either. In these circumstances "Book Bucks" and other extrinsic rewards might be the only chance the teacher has to foster a very young child to start reading.

Firstly, why do so many assume that kids with little parent/home support need extrinsic rewards to be motivated to learn? Regardless of the quality or quantity of parental involvement, our long-term goal for all children should remain a love for books not rewards. Not only does it make little sense to distract children who already have a love for books with rewards -- but it might make even less sense to entice reluctant readers to read by telling them reading is something one would not want to do unless bribed (or threatened). If we want to inspire children to have a love for reading, shouldn't our schools focus on a culture of reading rather than a culture of rewards?

2. Some parents and teachers can't get children to read without some kind of incentive program.

That some children will only read when bribed or threatened is as unfortunate as it is predictable, but I don't see this as an argument for more rewards and punishments -- rather, I see this as an indictment of such programs. If children become acclimated to reading only when extrinsically induced, should we really be surprised that they refuse to read when the rewards and punishments are removed? In fact, this might be one of the best arguments against trying to entice reluctant readers with rewards and then weaning them off -- which is really nothing more than the ol' bait and switch.

3. How will it affect your child if you opt them out of the school's rewards program?

When schools employ reward systems, they put progressive parents in a difficult spot. Because the only way anyone can experience the absence of a reward is as a punishment, it is very likely that when parents opt their children out, their children will experience this as a punishment. This doesn't make opting out impossible, but it certainly makes doing the right thing challenging for parents and their children.

4. If parents express their concerns for incentive programs, how will that affect their relationship with the teacher?

The only way to guarantee not to rupture the parent-teacher relationship is to remain silent -- that is to say, go along to get along. But then what kind of relationship is built on submissive silence? It is likely that the most progressive teachers will see an informed parent who plays an active role in their child's education as an ally; and yet, it's very likely that the most unimpressive teachers will see these parents as nothing more than problems to be dismissed.

If you want to read about how a school nurtures a culture of reading around reading (not rewards), check out principal Chris Wejr's school in his post Creating the Conditions: A Love of Reading.

I would also suggest you read Alfie Kohn's How to Create Non-Readers: Reflections on Motivation, Learning and Sharing Power.

Are children in control of their misbehavior?

When faced with working with children who are the hardest to like and educate, some adults like to pronounce that:

Children are in control of their behaviour. They choose to either behave or misbehave.

I've often heard this as a kind of Aha! moment -- as if this statement told us something we did not already know about a child who has difficulty navigating their day.

While it's true that some children in extreme cases may not be able to control their behaviour, this is far from the default. For the most part, every child is in control of their behaviour. But focusing on the idea that children are in control of their behaviours and are choosing to behave or misbehave can lead to a predictable and unfortunate mindset:

If we focus on the idea that children are choosing to misbehave and be unsuccessful, we might be tempted to frame this as a motivation problem which we believe can be solved with rewards and punishments. If we apply the right kind and amount of carrots and sticks,  we can make kids make better decisions.

It's at this point that I use some of Dr. Ross Greene's work to help me reframe this mindset. Like Ross Greene, I believe that children will be successful if they can -- this differs greatly from the mindset above which tends to believe children will be successful when they want to. The point here is that children don't go bad -- they get lost, and it's our job to help them find themselves.

My experience working in both a mainstream middle school, a lower socio-economic K-8 and a children's inpatient psychiatric assessment unit tells me that misbehavior is not the problem -- it is a symptom of a much larger problem that tends to get ignored because we are busy snuffing out the misbehavior. 

Like Ross Greene, I frame a child's difficulties not necessarily as a choice that needs to be convinced otherwise -- instead, I see a child's difficulties as proof that the child is lagging skills, and it's our job to help teach them those skills.

Are children in control of their misbehavior? 

Who cares. 

We are far better of spending our limited time, effort and resources using misbehavior as a symptom that helps us identify the lagging skills that are creating unsolved problems for the child and the adults in their life.

Working with children when they are at their worst

I teach explosive children in a children's psychiatric assessment unit. There are 8 beds on the unit and I have a very small classroom. Here's an example of how I work with children when they are at their worst. Jasper is an explosive 11 year old boy who is verbally offensive and physically abusive. He's hard to like. Let me be crystal clear. He's very hard to like. But does that change how I treat him? Absolutely not. I had a couple days to develop a relationship with Jasper before this incident.

Here's what happened.

I was quickly finishing my lunch in my classroom before taking my 5 students, who are inpatients on a children's psychiatric assessment unit, swimming. As I scarfed down the last bite of my sandwich, I heard some yelling.

When I walked towards the crowd of students and staff, I could hear one of the staff yell at Jasper to go to his room. Jasper yelled back, stating that no one could tell him what to do. As I walked closer, Jasper spotted me. He walked straight at me and reported in a mostly calm and collected manner that, "Curtis made a joke about me wearing speedos and that was mean". He then promptly walked to his room and sat on the floor in his doorway.

I walked to the nurse's station where most of the staff was collecting when someone told me that Jasper had hit Curtis. As I polled the crowd, their expressions all said the same thing: "There's no way Jasper can go swimming now." I stated that I needed a minute to work with Jasper and Curtis before all of us would go swimming.

I walked over to Jasper who was still sitting on the floor sulking. In order to talk with him (rather than down on him) I sat on the floor with my legs crossed, just like him and said, "You look sad, what's up?"

Jasper looked up at me and barked, "If he ever makes fun of me like that again, I'm going to fucking kill him. I mean it. I'll fucking kill him."

My response was three simple words, "I believe you." It is tempting to argue with Jasper and tell him that he isn't allowed to kill anyone, but I knew this wasn't the hill I wanted to die on right now -- there was a more important problem that I need to address so I prioritized my attention and mostly ignored this threat. (If you are familiar with Ross Greene's approach than this is what Plan C looks like) It's also important to note that while it is true that I did believe Jasper felt like killing Curtis, I did not believe for one second that he could or would actually do it.

"Do you remember what you said to me before you came to sit over here?"

"No."

"Jasper, I was impressed."

He looked up at me and was surprised to hear me talking about something I was impressed with. He stopped crying, wiped a tear and asked, "What do you mean?"

"Jasper you came over to me only moments after the heat of the moment and with a very calm tone, no swearing or yelling, you gave me an accurate description of what happened. I am impressed."

He looked down again but didn't say anything.

"Jasper there's one other person in this unit that you should have said that to."

"Joe, there's no other adult here that I could have said that to. You are the only one who helps me instead of giving me trouble."

(Now this isn't exactly true, but it is Jasper's perception so it is his reality. And again, this isn't the problem I wanted to address right now, so I chose to use Plan C and ignored it).

"Jasper, I wasn't talking about an adult. Jasper, I'm going to say something really strange. Are you ready?"

He looked up and said, "Sure".

"I think you should have said it to Curtis."

He stared at me.

I waited.

He stared some more.

I waited.

He still just stared at me.

I waited longer. I could tell he was thinking, in fact I could almost see the smoke coming out of his ears. He was really perplexed by my suggestion. I'm usually pretty good at wait-time, but even I couldn't take this staring contest any longer, so I broke the silence. "What do you think about that, Jasper?"

"Well... huh... that's an interesting idea."

His reaction told me that he honestly had never even considered this as an alternative to hitting. "How can we fix this problem?"

"He could say sorry, but sorry won't make the pain go away. You know for me words hurt a thousand times worse than physical pain. I have a swing at home and none of my friends can swing on it because it hurts their nuts, but I can swing on it all day because I have an abnormal tolerance for physical pain, but words stab me in the heart. They hurt so bad."

It took every ounce of self-control not to laugh at his explanation, but I was able to hold back. "I believe you, Jasper. I can see that Curtis's words hurt you. And you're right, an apology won't take away the hurt. But an apology will do something different. It will plant the seed of a new feeling called forgiveness that, if you let it, will grow larger than the hurt. But remember, 'sorry' is not a word -- it does not come from your mouth, it comes from your heart. People also like it when others ask if we are ok. It's kind of weird, but even when we are hurting, it makes us feel better to know that other people care. Have you ever noticed that?"

"Yeah, I have."

"Jasper, if Curtis apologized to you and you could tell that he really meant it, would that help to solve this problem?"

"Yes, and I think I would like him to ask me if I'm ok."

"Cool. Let's do that in a minute, but first, we have one more problem that we need to solve."

I could see some of the excitement rush out of Jasper's expression as he hung his head again. It looked like he was preparing himself for trouble.

"Jasper, you hit Curtis."

"Actually, I hit him twice." (I find this fascinating because when an adult yelled at Jasper that he wasn't allowed to hit others and that he needed to go to his room, he denied hitting anyone. And yet when Jasper sees the adults less like punishers and more like teachers he is prepared to correct me and admit that he hit Curtis not once but twice).

"How do we make this right?"

"I could apologize... but remember words hurt way worse than physical pain. They aren't the same."

"Jasper, do you remember your friends on the swing? What if Curtis is less like you and more like your friends? What if he is the opposite to you and he has an abnormal tolerance to words but physical pain hurts a thousand times worse?"

He stared again, but this time I could really tell that a light bulb had just turned on. "Well, I suppose that could be possible. I think I should say sorry."

"Remember, 'sorry' isn't a word."

"Actually, at this point, I'm feeling pretty bad about what I did. I want to apologize and mean it."

"What else could you do?"

"I could ask him if he's ok."

"I bet he would like that. You ready to try it?"

"Yes."

"Ok. You wait here and I'll get Curtis."

I walked over to Curtis where he was talking with another adult and still rubbing his head. "Curtis, can I talk with you about how we can make things right?"

"Sure." Curtis was quite calm. He's a little more reasonable and a little less explosive than Jasper.

"I think we have a couple problems here."

"Yeah, I shouldn't have made that joke."

"No, you probably shouldn't have, but Jasper shouldn't have hit you, either."

"No, he shouldn't have. You know I was just kidding around. I see Jasper joking around with others all the time and I just thought he could take it, but I guess I was wrong."

"Yeah, it's tough isn't it. I know that I've had times where I thought someone would appreciate my jokes but then realized they were hurt by them. It's not easy getting a read on how others will respond. So how can we make this right?"

"I could apologize."

"Really? That's interesting, because I was talking to Jasper and he's feeling really terrible about hitting you and he wants to apologize, too."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. You want to go talk with him with me?"

"Sure."

When we came together I asked who wanted to go first and they both tried to start. Noticing that they cut each other off, they both offered to let the other go first. It was pretty cute.

Curtis started, "Jasper, I'm sorry about that joke I cracked. I thought you were a jokester so I thought you would take it."

Jasper replied, "Yeah, I am a jokester but there's a funny thing about me, I can give jokes but I can't seem to take them very well."

At this point, I actually laughed a little because of how accurate Jasper's self-reflection truly was. I said, "Looks like you found something we need to work on together."

"Yeah, I guess I did," answered Jasper.

"So are you ok?" asked Curtis.

"Yeah. And I'm sorry for hitting you, Curtis. Are you ok?"

"Yeah, I'll be ok."

I could tell that both boys meant it and that both had planted the seeds of forgiveness. I could tell that we were ready to move on so I asked, "you boys ready to go swimming?"

Both boys said yes, and we all went swimming.

***

When I got back from swimming, I had a couple staff members who were a little unsure as to why I let Jasper go swimming. Here are some of the arguments I made for why punishing Jasper would have been at best unhelpful and at worst harmful towards our ultimate goals for him:

• It was a lot of work to get Jasper to think about more than just himself and to empathize and apologize. Can you see how all this hard work would have been destroyed had I then punished Jasper by not letting him go swimming? Invoking the punishment would have encouraged Jasper to revert to thinking only about how this situation affected him. I'll put it another way: Punishing Jasper by taking away swimming forcibly isolates him from his peers, in front of his peers, and isolating a child who struggles with social skills is like banning books from a child who struggles to read.

• Punishment ruptures relationships.There is a very good chance that Jasper would grow to resent Curtis because had Curtis not cracked the joke, Jasper could have gone swimming. There is also a good chance that Jasper would resent me for invoking the punishment. Can you see how rupturing relationships with punishments is one of the last things Jasper needs? He already has very few meaningful relationships, let's not make things harder for him than he already has it.

• Punishment teaches Jasper a lesson: You can get your way with people who are weaker than you are by hurting them. Can you see that Jasper understands this lesson already all too well? Can you see that Jasper's working model for relationships is already built on a foundation of coerciveness, manipulation and power? Can you see how punishment would only perpetuate this vicious cycle? It's time to drop the archaic strategy that says when kids do bad things, we should do bad things to them.

• Jasper doesn't have a lot going for him. He tells us that he hates himself and that he wants to die. He's already in a psychiatric assessment unit. Jasper experiences life as punishment everyday. How will taking more things away from him help?

• Some people fear that by letting Jasper go swimming, we are teaching him and others that hitting is ok. This is a fear that is mostly fabricated by a deeply disturbing, distasteful and distrustful view of the nature of children. Not one of the children who witnessed Jasper hit Curtis would have said that going swimming made hitting Curtis right. Not one. They all understood that Jasper has difficulties working with others and that he is still learning how to navigate his day without explosions. If I punish Jasper, it does indeed teach everyone a lesson, and that is that you are only accepted when you are acceptable, and this is a recipe for disaster for children who have learned to see themselves as unacceptable on a daily basis. 

Zeroes and Grading

John Scammell is a math teacher turned Field Services Facilitator for the Alberta Assessment Consortium. This post first appeared on his blog here.

by John Scammell

I used to punish students with grades. I taught high school mathematics, and I believed I was holding my students accountable and preparing them for the real world by giving them zeros when they didn’t do something I wanted them to do. I was wrong.

About ten years ago, my principal told me to stop giving zeros. I didn’t understand why she had removed something I was using to control kids. I spent the next few years trying to figure out why I shouldn’t give zeros. Because I did the research, I became a better teacher.

There seems to be a perception that giving zeros means a teacher has high standards. This notion is incorrect for two reasons. First of all, the only standards that are assessable are the ones outlined in our curricula. A student’s grade should reflect level of performance against these standards. Secondly, this perception of high standards is based on some arbitrary standard of behavior and accountability. I would contend that giving zeros to students actually lowers this standard.

I no longer give zeros, and I believe that my standards of accountability are higher than they were before. Giving a zero is equivalent to letting the student quit. Students will say to me, “Just give me the zero. I don’t feel like doing the work.” Letting students quit does not teach them responsibility or prepare them for the real world. Making them do the work does. Letting them off the hook effectively lowers the standards of accountability.

The message I give my students is that they must finish what they start. Responsible adults finish what they start. I want my students to turn into responsible adults. When students are missing something I absolutely must grade, I make them do it. If students won’t, I involve their parents and the school administration. The message I am sending is that I expect students to complete their tasks. That’s accountability. That’s responsibility. That’s life. My standards of accountability are high because I do not let my students opt out of their work.

As I see it, teaching involves two main jobs. I need to teach the curriculum to the best of my ability. Then I need to accurately assess and report the progress of my students. Good assessment practice dictates that the grade I assign should reflect what the student knows compared to the curriculum. Nothing else is gradable. The student who comes to class smiling every day with the proper materials and homework done is a joy to teach. If that student, however, cannot demonstrate adequate performance compared to the curricular standards, he/she fails. I am in no way suggesting that we pass students who can’t meet the curricular standards. We do, however, need to ensure we have accurate and meaningful evidence before we judge.

Some students are difficult. Some students frequently skip class, are disruptive, unpleasant, and unprepared. Difficult children that can demonstrate that they meet the curricular standards, though, should pass the class even if they are missing an assignment or two. If a student has missed so many assessments that I can’t evaluate accurately, then I shouldn’t assess by guessing. Such students will either have to make up missing work in a timely manner, or they may have to repeat or extend the course. I will not randomly choose to give a grade of zero, or any other number unsupported by evidence. It wouldn’t be an accurate reflection of what the child knows compared to the curriculum.

We need to remember that the vast majority of our students do everything we ask of them. Only a handful of students consistently fail to do the assessments we need them to do. We shouldn’t punish those students with a grade of zero any more than we would punish them with the strap. We all agree that the strap is archaic and has no place in schools, don’t we? A zero is no different than the strap. It’s an inappropriate response to a behavior.

We can do better. We can raise our standards of accountability by insisting that students finish what they start. We can insist they improve on substandard work. We can ask them to put in extra hours to make up what they have missed. In fact, we owe it to them. These expectations are the things their employers and post-secondary teachers should be asking of them, too.

Here's what really happens when you give a zero

If a student doesn't hand in their assignment, conventional wisdom tells us to give the student a zero. After the zero is assigned there are two possibilities:

1. The student will do the assignment and hand it in for a mark other than zero. 

or 

2. The student will not do the assignment and will keep the zero.

The threat of a zero will only extrinsically motivate the students that think they have a chance of doing well in the rest of the course -- but these students are not typically the kinds of students we are really having trouble with.

The students who are the hardest to educate and the hardest to like, are the ones that already get a steady diet of zeroes, and yet they are the ones who need us the most. For these students, they quit long before the zero was even assigned, and now the zero is doubling down on all the reasons why the assignment will never get done. For these kids, there is no such thing as a temporary zero -- zeroes are permanent. If the student had reasons to not do the assignment before, (whether they be real, perceived or excuses) the zero is the nail in the coffin.

Let's think about this for a minute.

It is very likely that dropouts are the kids we have the most trouble with in the real world, and yet they are the ones who get the most zeroes. If giving zeroes helped prepare dropouts for the real world, why is that they are the ones who have the most trouble living in the real world? Alberta does a good enough job giving kids zeroes and failing kids. About 1 in 4 kids don't graduate. Is anyone really prepared to argue that this number is too low?

I find it sadly ironic that people who support assigning zeroes to children do so by claiming it's for the children it hurts the most.

My second interview with CBC Radio on giving kids zeroes

Here is a second short interview I had on CBC Radio. My first was with CBC Calgary, and this one with CBC Edmonton. We talked briefly about no zero grading policies.

Zeroes for students and Suspensions for teachers

Consider these two scenarios and let's see if there's a connection.

Scenario A

Let's pretend I'm a teacher who believes in grading students work and when they don't hand things in on time I deduct marks each day until the assignment is handed in. When kids don't believe that my assignments are a good use of their time or effort, I give them a zero.

I believe I am holding kids accountable and responsible for doing their job. I believe I am upholding high standards.

Scenario B

I am that same teacher who works in a school district where there is a no zero grading policy. Because I don't agree that this policy is a good use of my time and effort, I refuse to follow the district's no zero grading policy and am suspended from teaching.

The school district believes they are holding me accountable and responsible for doing my job. They believe they are upholding high standards.

Conclusion

The threat of a zero is the equivalent to the threat of a suspension. These are instruments of control between the powerful and powerless. Zeroes for students and suspensions for teachers have less to do with learning, accountability and responsibility and more to do with compliance and punishment.

How we feel about zeroes and suspensions all depends on whether we are dispensing or receiving them. The kid getting the zero is likely to feel the same way as the teacher getting the suspension.

This is why I cashed in my reward and punishment tool box a long time ago and found a better way to work with people, regardless of whether they have more or less power than me.

My interview on CBC Radio on assigning kids zeroes

Here is the short interview I had on CBC Radio Calgary. We talked briefly about no zero grading policies.




Here is the post I wrote on how Giving kids a zero teaches them a lesson, and you can find all of my posts on the folly of grades and other assessment topics here.

You can also read about The Case Against Grades here.

Giving a student a zero teaches them a lesson

Here is some of the common sense around giving kids zeroes that doesn't make a lot of sense and is far too common.

Giving a kid a zero teaches them a lesson.

Yes, zeroes do teach lessons, but they are not the lessons you might be thinking. 

When we say things like "teach them a lesson" or "hold them accountable" it's important to note that these phrases mean nothing more than "punish children". Punishment teaches an important lesson: 

You can get your way with people who are weaker than you are by hurting them. 

One problem with this strategy is that the more you use power to control someone the less real influence you will have on their lives. As a parent and an educator, the prospect of reducing my influence with my children and students is unacceptable. 

This is why I've come to believe that children should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information. To do this, we need to move away from a "doing things to" children mindset and move towards a "working with children" mindset. If done properly, this means that teachers are less like judges-in-waiting who have an adversarial relationship with kids to being more like a safe and caring ally.

We need to move away from thinking "when kids do something bad, we must do something bad to them" and move towards "we have a problem here; how are we going to solve it together?"

It takes courage not to punish students with zeroes, and it takes real effort to see problems as an opportunity for the teacher to teach and the student to learn. If a child doesn't know how to read, we teach them how to read, and yet when a child doesn't hand things in on time or behave, we punish them. See the difference?

To those who support the use of zeroes, I ask this: "After you've assigned all those zeroes and things are still no better, then what?"

Zeroes motivate kids.

Yes, zeroes motivate kids -- they motivate them to quit.

Assigning students zeroes to make them accountable works well on bumper stickers and it allows many teachers to look good by saying that they will not tolerate failure. But it represents a hollow promise. Far from improving education, assigning zeroes marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy and from quality. (I stole this from Senator Paul Wellstone)

Failing students, fails them more than they could ever fail us. When children come to school well-behaved and academically inclined, it makes a teacher's job easier; and when they don't, it makes a teacher's job more important. We can give a child a zero or we can help them learn -- but we can't do both.

When children have trouble learning this should be seen not as a problem with the child, but a problem for the curriculum to solve. The practice of assigning grades (including zeroes) prevents this from ever happening.

If a student does nothing, they should get nothing.

The children who are the hardest to like and the hardest to teach, need us the most. Those who support giving students zeroes will say that we've got a choice: Either we hold kids accountable by giving them a zero or we let them get away with bloody murder. False dichotomies make choosing easy. If these were truly our only two choices, I might even choose giving zeroes over anarchy. Thankfully, social promotion and grade retention are not our only two choices. The alternative is to properly support children so they can learn.

On the surface, all this discussion about no zeroes appears to be about grading and credit. But it's not. What we really need to talk about are the long-term goals we have for our children.

When we stop and think about our long-term goals for our children we say we want them to be caring, competent, responsible, ethical, empathetic, happy and intelligent. We also want our children to be intrinsically motivated to learn. 

Yes, we want to make sure that we have high standards for our future drivers, welders, pilots, doctors, and engineers - both for their safety and ours. But we also want drivers, welders, doctors and engineers who are passionate and caring about what they do for its own sake. 

Grades, including zeroes, are at best unhelpful and at worst harmful in pursuing our long term goals. I have as much of a problem with assigning a student a zero, as I do with assigning them any other grade, including 100%.

The case against grades may be an inconvenient truth that we can no longer ignore.

Let me explain.

You see, I could not care less how motivated my children or students are. What I care about is how they are motivated. Motivation is not this single entity that you either have a lot or little of. There are two kinds: intrinsic and extrinsic. If you are intrinsically motivated than you are doing something for its own sake; if you are extrinsically motivated, you are driven to do something or not do something based on a reward or punishment that may be waiting for you. There's a big difference between a teacher who teaches because she wants to artfully guide children to becoming better people, and the teacher who teaches for the summer holidays. And there's a big difference between a student who completes an assignment because they want to learn and a student who completes an assignment because they don't want to get a zero.

But that's not even the catchy part - the real catch is that these two kinds of motivation tend to be inversely related. When you pry on a student's extrinsic motivation by bribing them with high grades or threatening them with a zero, you run the risk of growing their extrinsic motivation while their intrinsic love for whatever it is you want them to do shrivels.

Do you want your doctor to be a grade grubber or someone who actually cares about their profession and you? What's scary is that grading can often make these two kinds of people indistinguishable. We should be truly outraged that most members of our species have come to believe that collecting As is the whole point of school.

Here's an example from my own teaching career.

I was teaching grade 8 science, and we were learning about life. We were examining animal cells, plant cells, human body systems, diseases and anything else the students felt like learning about. With my guidance, they have a lot of autonomy and choice in selecting what they want to learn.

Some students were learning about Leukaemia while others learned about the organelles that make up the cell. Sarah approached me and asked if she could do a poster project showing what she can learn about breast cancer. I said, "that's up to you."

She began her research and poster during class, and come lunch she asked me if she could work on her project during lunch hour. Again, I said, "that's up to you."

As she continued to glue new information on her poster, she turned to me and asked something very peculiar. "Mr. Bower, will I get an A on this?"

This was very odd because it was March, which means she hadn't received a grade from me on any project for six months. (Other than the report card, I never grade students)

Another student overheard Sarah's question and replied, "Why are you asking Mr. Bower that? You know nothing is for grades!"

I too looked at her in confusion and said, "Why are you asking me if your project will get an A? You know I won't grade it."

I asked, "Why are you doing this poster?"

She looked perplexed and said, "I want to get an A."

I had her to stop working on her poster and asked, "Sarah, why are you really doing this poster?"

She stopped and looked at me. She started to tear up a little, and said, "my aunty has breast cancer."

I was moved by her honesty and sincerity. It was very clear to me that she cared deeply for her aunty. I said, "Sarah, I couldn't think of a better reason for you to do this poster project. You do this poster and share it with your aunty."

Two days later, Sarah and her mom came in for student-led portfolios. I started to share this story with Sarah's mom when she started to cry. Then Sarah cried. I didn't cry, but I was close. Her mom shared with me that Sarah was reading more at home and showed more interest in learning than in past years.

Honestly, I can not think of a better reason for Sarah to learn about breast cancer. And yet, if I graded students, this whole experience might have ended when she said she was doing this poster to get an A. Another teacher might have smiled and thought to themselves good for you, Sarah. You are such a good little student.

Can you see how ultimately distracting grades can be? They run interference on our motivation and learning all the time. We owe it to our students and our own learning to abolish grading as much as we possibly can so all students can find more authentic reasons to learn.

If you give grades, and your students are uninterested or disengaged, might it be because they are searching for a more intrinsically motivating reason to give-a-shit? It's easy to blame the kids, but it takes more than a little guts to look at our own practices and make changes to how we have done things for so long.

I could use grades to artificially induce my student's learning, but to be honest, I'd rather help them find a real reason to learn. Grades seem so utterly uninspiring compared to Sarah's reasoning.

Some people might respond to this story with, "well that's nice for Sarah, but she was already coming to school and wanted to learn. I have children or students who do neither." To this I say, "you're right, but giving zeroes to students who have either mentally or physically dropped out of school won't help. If giving zeroes to the children who are the hardest to educate worked, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Since teaching Sarah in a conventional middle school, I have moved on to teaching in a children's psychiatric assessment unit. Guess how many children come to my program with a love for school. Not many. Too many of these children find themselves on school's discard pile. They've had a steady diet of zeroes for years. I find it sadly ironic that people who support assigning zeroes to children do so by claiming it's for the children it hurts the most.

Until we stop selling 'more of the same' as a daring departure from what we've always done, the status quo will continue to gain more and more momentum. Real change will require school to look a lot less like school - and to do that would require a whole lot less zeroes.

If it's harmful, get rid of it

Here is a guest post that was written by Lisa Cooley. She blogs here.

by Lisa Cooley

Let's think about those school practices that have actually been proven to be harmful to kids. Not big-picture issues this time; let's think of the littler stuff that is very big in the eyes of the kids who are subjected to it.

1. Homework. Get rid of it. Elementary grades: we should be giving none at all. Middle and high grades: only stuff that is supported by research. Don't make kids work a second shift. Do we really have any idea the happiness this would bring to so many kids? Instant good will on the part of children, with accompanying positive impact on learning.

2. Extrinsic motivation. Snuff it out. No more lollipops for "good behavior," no more rewards for conforming to adults' expectations. Again, check out the research. All negative. Dump it.

3. Early start times for adolescents. Do you need to see any more research? Our high schools are full of zombies half asleep, half awake, all miserable. Let them sleep. It won't kill us.

4. Ban on cell phones. If you can't hold their attention in competition with a cell, that's not their problem.

5. Ban on social media. Kids have the world at their fingertips...except in school. Figure out how to connect your classes to the world. Better still, let kids do it.

6. Stop making them wait to go to the bathroom when they have to go.

7. Stop the ban on food in the classroom. When kids are hungry, they should eat.

8. Let them play. Let them hang out. Let them socialize.

9. Better lunch food, with kids playing a role in researching and deciding on menus.

Easy peasy, right? Send me your ideas on ways to make kids happier in school, starting right now.

Everything works

Punish a child to teach him a lesson and he'll learn that you can use power over those weaker than you to get what you want.

Reward students for high testsandgrades or punish them for low testsandgrades and you teach children that testsandgrades, not learning, are the point of school.

Use multiple choice tests as your primary form of assessment and you teach children that in the real world you don't have to generate your own response to solve problems.

Frame learning as a competition and you force children to see their peers as obstacles to their own success.

Assign boatloads of nightly homework to children and you encourage them to see learning as this thing they just need to get done before they can return to their regularly scheduled lives.

Praise administrators for their district or school's standardized test scores and you push them to place pressure on their teachers to attain higher scores by whatever means available.

Mandate teachers to attend one-size-fits-all, "drive-by" professional development sessions and you teach them that professional development is something done to them rather than by them.

Catch children being good and you encourage them to be good so they get caught.

Everything "works". The question is: works to do what?

Rewarding & punishing students for test scores

An Orange County High School was using a student ID colour-coding scheme to visibly rank and sort students according to their scores on standardized tests. The Orange Country Register reports:

Kennedy High School in La Palma is requiring students to carry school ID cards in one of three colors based on their performance on the California Standards Tests – black, gold or white – plus a spiral-bound homework planner with a cover of a matching color. The black card, which is the highest level, and the gold card give students a range of special campus privileges and discounts, while the white card gives students no privileges and forces them to stand in a separate cafeteria lunch line.

There is so much wrong with this that I'm not sure where to start... but here goes:

• Students should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information. Psychological research tells us that there are two kinds of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Not only are there two different kinds of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic, but they also tend to be inversely related. That is, when one grows, the other tends to shrink. Because of this, adults have no business ever prying on their children's extrinsic motivation to learn. Also keep in mind that this was both a reward and punishment system; the absence of the reward is the punishment (the stick is hidden in the carrot). If we wanted to extinguish a student's love for learning, I could not devise a better program than this.

• Sometimes with the best intentions, schools end up doing questionable things in the name of raising achievement. When achievement is code for high scores and increasing achievement means nothing more than test scores are low make them go up, reward and punishment schemes like this are as predictable as they are destructive. Ultimately there are two problems with tests: right answers don't necessarily signal understanding and wrong answers don't necessarily signal its absence.  Because tests measure what matters least and often encourage a narrowing of the curriculum and test preparation, low scores on tests is nothing to be ashamed of and high scores are nothing to be proud of. So even if this colour-coded caste system scheme did increase test scores, this at best provides us with no useful information about the school and at worst tells us the school's priorities are about raising scores not raising children. In other words, the goal is as flawed as the method.

• The trouble with this approach is that it intensifies the damage our obsession with testing is doing. Anthony Cody writes about this on his blog where he explains that through branding and labelling a student's worth is literally defined by testsandgrades in such a way that the majority of the children are relegated to a subclass. Cody explains that the quality of a student's learning should never be reduced to a few test scores because the tests can't tell us what we ask of them. Real learning is messy - standardized tests are nothing if not infinitely tidy. See the problem? Or as Alfie Kohn puts it, "I've come to realize that standardized tests serve mostly to make dreadful forms of teaching appear successful."

• Those who decided on this policy may not know anything about eugenics or believe in eugenic principles, but this policy is what a eugenicist would do, under conditions a eugenicist would have endorsed. This is what David B. Cohen wrote about in his post Eugenic Legacies Still Influence Education where he makes the point that this ranking and ordering of students served absolutely no useful educational value. The stratification and segregation of students does nothing but endorse a caste system. While I can see why schools might want to educate student's on what a caste system is - this is not even remotely the same as suggesting we should immerse children in one.

• Campbell's Law tells us that the more any one indicator (such as test scores) are used for decision making, the more that indicator will suffer from corruption, therefore, bastardizing the very processes it was meant to monitor. We can bemoan this inconvenience all we want. We can play the blame game until we are blue in the face, but it won't change a damn thing. We can no more successfully ignore this social science law than we could ignore a law like gravity. 

Since this story broke, the California school district has chosen to discontinue some elements of the incentive plan including the removal of the colour-coded binders and student IDs. They also noted that the incentives of a public nature, such as different lunch lines, would be no longer used. While some may see this as a victory, I don't. The school district has already pledged to create a similar but less public way of rewarding and punishing their students via test scores. This tells me that the only thing they deemed inappropriate about their incentive program was that it was too public and they got caught.

I guess what I'm really saying is that bad stuff will return if it isn't rejected for being bad... and this is bad.

Do you want a time-out?

I was at the park the other day with my daughter Kayley when I overheard a parent say to their child, "Do you want a time-out?"

While this parent may have had good intentions, I find this tactic to be less than an optimal way of helping children grow up to be the good people we want them to become.

The question "do you want a time-out?" is not a fair question; in fact, t's not a question at all because even if the child replied "no", I doubt any parent who is subscribing to time-outs in the first place would honor their children's denial of the time-out. At worst "Do you want a time-out?" is a rhetorical question -- at worst (and much more likely), it's not a question at all -- it's a threat.

And there's a reason for this; because time-outs are only "effective" when there's an imbalance in power (always in the adults favor, of course), parents must impose their will upon the child to get them to do whatever it is they want the child to do.

Because our words matter, it is really important to know where the term time-out came from: Time-out is short for time-out from positive reinforcement. In theory it was designed and implemented by behaviourist B.F Skinner on rats and pigeons, but today in practice it's used by parents on their children.

Skinner's work with time-outs had one goal: control animal behavior.

Let's take a quick look at all three words.

Firstly, a whole boat load of research around controlling parenting can be summarized by Gordon Thomas:

The more you use power to control people, the less real influence you will have on their lives.

Secondly, it should concern us greatly that behaviorists see little to no difference between doing things to animals and humans to make them behave. I think we should all think long and hard about whether we are okay with subjecting our children to something that was designed on rats and pigeons.

Thirdly, misbehaviors are the symptoms of much larger problems. When we choose to treat the symptoms we ignore the underlying issues that require our real attention. There is a big difference between simply wanting a misbehavior to stop NOW! and working with kids to ensure they don't feel the need to misbehave in the first place or again. It's the difference between treating a fever with cold baths and Aspirin versus addressing the pneumonia that caused the fever.

Time-out is sold as a daring departure from the status quo when actually it is an intensification of the timeless punishments that have always failed us. After all, how would you like to be forcibly isolated from your peers in front of your peers?

Education deform is dehumanizing

A better rule book with better rule-followers won't make anything better.

A better curriculum with better tests will never make schools better.

Education deform is built around dehumanizing the education system by propping up content-bloated, prefabricated, highly prescribed curriculums that are married to punitive, high stakes standardized tests that are quickly followed by the reinforcements. We are all choking on carrots or sore from sticks - either way, most of us are either too drunk on incentives or scared shitless to stand up and question school deformers.

Those who present a healthy dose of skepticism about what is generally taken on faith as the best way to improve schools (read: prescribed curriculums and standardized tests) are put in their place with the kind of efficiency that would make the likes of Benito Mussolini proud.

I don't have all the answers for authentic education reform, but I do know this: getting all teachers and all students to simply teach and learn the curriculum so that they can achieve high test scores won't improve a damn thing. To think otherwise reminds me of an old saying: "For every problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant and wrong." Good teaching and real learning are far too complex for what a silly, over-simplified solution such as standardization can offer.

A teacher who teaches curriculum well with students who test out proficient can no more call themselves teachers and learners than someone who simply follows a trail can call themselves an outdoorsman.

The sooner we can come to this realization the better because our kids can't wait.