Wisdom_Lover's Blog

So what you appear to be saying is that by rewarding good behavior and NOT punishing bad behavior society will somehow be better?

Look at the City of Milwaukee and its' Non-Crime problem. It seems to me the DAs' office has been practicing this theory for years, and look where it has got them.

No, my friend, you mis-understand... by establishing set of rewards and privileges which can only be earned by maintaining certain specific guidelines of peaceful and orderly behavior, the failure to receive those rewards and privileges IS the punishment, and replaces punishment. Leave the locked-down, police roaming the halls, discipline by force, environment in place, only for those students who fail to respond to the incentives provided.(if they existed) This, I feel, would be a more balanced model of a society where there is value in obeying rules, and consequences for disregarding them.

In contrast, we now have a system which generally ignores the children who maintain a median level of discipline, rewards only students who excel above and beyond what is expected, and turns the rest over to the police. Do YOU feel this is the most "educated" response our schools should be able to come up with?

I knew a teacher once, who set-up a system where, every time a student showed up for class, they got a dated voucher. At the end of the semester, she threw a pizza party. Only the students who had a full set of these attendance vouchers was invited. This approach presented a powerful metaphor: exclusion from societal privileges, enjoyed by others, as a consequence for disobedience. In the second semester, all of her students showed up for class, every day. This shows the change that one teacher was able to make, with a little bit of creative thinking; harnessing the overwhelming power of student peer pressure, instead of trying to dominate over it, with authoritariani