I found this email from Jim Tripp in the 2009 labyrinthe:
Ben,
I’m reading Alfie Kohn’s book “Punished by Rewards” right now, and I just finished reading something that has left me unsure about the current Fred Jones craze that is sweeping some people off of their feet.
Perhaps it is the most effective practice that allows us to carry out our goals in the classroom. Perhaps not. I don’t really know. You have cited Kohn and it seems that you respect his integrity as a thinker.
I would like to copy a paragraph that condemns the practice of “collective rewards” and if you have any thoughts please share. Thanks!
“But competition is only one variation on the behaviorist theme that practically guarantees enmity. The other is the deployment of a collective reward. ‘If all of us stay on our very best behavior,’ intones the teacher… ‘we will have an ice cream party at the end of the day!’ (Insert here PAT at the end of the week in this case) …An excited murmur in the room soon fades with the realization that any troublemaker could spoil it for everyone else. This gambit is one of the most transparently manipulative strategies used by people in power. It calls forth a particularly noxious sort of peer pressure rather than encouraging genuine concern about the well-being of others. And pity the poor child whose behavior is cited that afternoon as the reason that ‘the party has been, I’m sorry to say, boys and girls, canceled.’ Will the others resent the teacher for tempting and then disappointing them, or for setting them against one another? Of course not. They will turn furiously on the designated demon. That, of course, is the whole idea: divide and conquer.” (pg. 56)
I responded to Jim:
Yes, it is about controlling them. Is it necessary? I would never call Kohn overly idealistic, but at what point do we address the practicality of his argument? Like Jim says, I really don’t know.
My reaction to this is that it goes a long way in explaining why kids often hate, or, at best, merely put up with, their days in school. Is it because the teachers who can survive in school are often able to survive by adopting a veneer of control, which teaching style is very anti Alfie Kohn and very pro Fred Jones?
If making school classrooms work requires control via rewards as per Fred Jones, perhaps it is the most effective practice that allows us to carry out our goals in the classroom.
I do know that Fred Jones doesn’t work for me. All my attempts at control extrinsically have failed. All my attempts at staying in what might call the “simplicity of flow” have worked. Keeping them in the language all the time and talking about them in humorous and admiring ways all week is the secret ingredient in my strongly disciplined classroom. I did not go into teaching to learn to manipulate teenagers. I believe in their goodness.
I love this motto from St. Mary’s Hall in San Antonio, and it will be the key to my approach to teaching, the inner thought that will weave and inform all of my instruction next year:
…teach me delight in simple things….
Why have I decided to base all of my teaching next year on this one sentence? Because, as we all are, I am very tired from all of the mental warfare in all six of the buildings I have taught in in my career. I just can’t “figure things out” anymore. I have figured it out. The answer to all my questions about teaching and discipline and everything else in teaching is comprehensible input, which is a very, very simple thing. I’m with Alfie and Flow.
Related Link:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2009/06/22/flow-in-tprs/