Give me a child, and I can make anything out of them.
It’s similar to training a rat. Put sugar on one side of the maze and the rat will find the sugar for a positive response. Put electric current on the walls of the opposite side and the rat will never go back.
This idea is also expressed in the ‘children are blank slates’ metaphor, where they can be trained into anything by providing the right inducements or deterrents. At least, this is what B.F. Skinner — American behaviorist — said in the 1980s and is the approach most schools continue to apply today.
(Watch more on modern alternatives from Dr. Gabor Mate’s video below.)
While behaviour control may work on children and students, the behaviour is being valued over the children themselves. Even if you get the desired behavioural changes, measure their stress hormones levels and they will be high.
3 million children in the United States are diagnosed for ADHD. BC Children’s Hospital has a special division to deal with effects of psychosis drugs on children. An American six year old was handcuffed by police to control his acting out in class. In British Columbia, a teacher taped a student’s head to a desk to handle her hyperactivity.
We’re seeing higher levels of stress in our students, which is resulting in increased diagnoses of anxiety, depression, dyslexia, ADHD, autism, and aspergers in younger and younger children; the response is to prescribe drugs or label these kids as troubled or disabled.
We are controlling our students with drugs and punishment. It’s too much for them to handle. And it’s not right.
No kid decides to be bad. They aren’t born ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ It’s adults who don’t like some behaviours, judge and label them, and apply behavioural techniques to control the child. Rather, adults need to ask, “What’s going on inside the child’s mind?”
We often hear, “That kid is acting out.” What this means, to the child, is they are acting out in response to feelings they don’t have words to explain. This form of communication is seen in benign instances when, for example, a person is struggling to communicate in a foreign language. Without the words to explain, we use gestures with our hands and mouth to demonstrate our need to eat.
“Acting out” is what humans do as part of our communication skill set. In fact, non-verbal communication accounts for 93% of all communication.
As parents and teachers, it is our job to see past our students’ behaviour and see them for who they are. It’s time we take our eyes off dealing with the behaviour (re: timeouts, logical consequences, and tough love) and understand the psychology of the child.
#ArcAcademy #InquiryLearning #DoWhatYouLove #GaborMate
