What Our Students Need: Switching from the Behaviorist to Cognitivist model in School (Part 1)

My daughter, age 8, her friend, and I visited the one room school house at our fair yesterday. We love to marvel at the quaintness of the room, the old wooden desks, and toys of yore whose use is lost on the young.

After perusing the Dick and Jane book and citing that it looked, "really old" 😆 (I remember reading that) they noticed a large cone in the front of the room.

"What does this say?" one asked. "Dunce," I said.

"What does that mean?" the other questioned.

"It means you are dumb. If you goofed around or didn't do your job you got stuck in the corner with this cone on your head."

The girls both looked at me with confusion. "Yes, I know it seems unbelievable that they would humiliate kids this way, but that's what they would do, force you to wear a hat that said you were dumb and sit you in a corner." Another patron laughed, and recited what I said to a friend, oblivious to the fact that this was typical back in the day...and sometimes today.

Although I wasn't asked to use the hat, I was asked to put a child in a corner in my classroom, in full view of everyone, when they got in trouble. I refused.

Now here's where it gets tricky. I am (was) a full on behaviorist. Had it not been for statistics, I honestly would have chosen the career of psychologist. So I am well versed in dangling carrots, stickers, intermittent reinforcement, and salivating dogs. I truly believe children can benefit from time to think (Time Out, Think Time) but I drew the line with public shaming in it's most blatant form. A student suffering from ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) who has experienced trauma in ways children, small children, should never experience (IE drug use in the home, lack of food, outright abuse by adults) will not be helped by yet another adult sticking them in a corner to humiliate them, chastise them, mock them, point out their foibles and make fun of them (which is really what the dunce cap approach did). This actually breeds apathy: a lack of concern for others. And soon children will model what they are taught and do the same; leading to another generation of folks who watch from the sideline unfazed by what happens in front of them. Ending apathy needs to begin with us.

One can't teach empathy without using compassion.
One can't teach compassion without being kind.
One can't teach kindness without a connection.

Connections first, consequences second.

Next: Switching from the Behaviorist to Cognitivist model: How to Escape the Sticker Chart