Why I’m Failing At Participative Rule Setting
Yesterday I tried to have a participative rule setting session with my students. Since I’m obviously not a big fan of imposing rules on children or using a system of rewards and punishments I wanted to attempt a group discussion on what classroom rules we should have. Here’s the basic idea behind participative rule setting:
This process can be initiated by teachers at the beginning of the term to establish rules that the whole classroom finds fair and are willing to follow. Students are more likely to keep to their end of the bargain when using No-Lose Conflict Resolution and participative rule setting because of a simple bit of common sense called The Principle of Participation.
Simply stated, the principle holds that people who are invited to participate in making decisions or setting up rules that affect them somehow are more willing to abide by them or keep to their part of an agreement. We all like feeling that our views are being represented.
Sounds great. But it isn’t easy to do. Yesterday’s class didn’t go well. I’ll explain some of the reasons I think I failed.
I Don’t Speak Chinese
This is a pretty obvious one but I think it’s important to understand how hard it is to communicate with children that don’t speak the same language.
There are some native English speakers and a few kids who are semi-fluent. But for most our interactions involve very basic, merely functional English communication. It is simple stuff like hello, how are you, go outside, go to the bathroom, who wants to play and whatever phrases we’re learning that day.
Oh yeah, there is also upside down. (This is a frequent request from the girls who want me to pick them up and carry them around upside down. It’s like some kind of drug; they get high on having blood rush to their brain. Anyway, I love the game too so I’m not complaining.)
The rest of the communication is nonverbal. This shouldn’t be underestimated. I know 100% that the kids can tell from my body language, the way I smile or laugh, how I pick them up, and everything else that I’m different from the Chinese assistants.
But when it comes to communicating an idea it gets much harder. I said to the whole class “I know this classroom has a lot of rules and I know that you guys don’t like some of them. I was hoping that we could spend ten or fifteen minutes and talk about the rules and see if we can come up with some that everybody agrees on.” The English speaking kids understood this sentence (partially at least, more on that later) but the Chinese kids had no clue. And how could they? I tried to simplify what I wanted but it isn’t easy to do. And it just confused them more. This led to the second problem.
The Chinese Translators
In my classroom there are a couple Chinese teachers who are there to help. One of them is my assistant and part of her job is to translate for me.
Usually, this isn’t a problem. She’s the nicest of the Chinese assistants and treats the kids very well. Unfortunately, this whole Principle of Participation thing wasn’t something she was even remotely familiar with. So when I said “I know you guys hate the no-talking-during-lunch rule” she translated it to “no talking during lunch.”
She wasn’t doing it maliciously or anything. When I told her I wanted to talk about the rules, she probably just assumed that it meant we were going to recite the rules. What else could it mean?
Either way, her translations essentially came out the exact opposite of what I wanted. She turned it from a participative rule setting session into a reminder about all the rules currently imposed. Fail.
This Idea Is More Foreign Than A Second Language
This is the issue that even had the English speakers confused.
Children in schools are not used to getting a say in the rules. Even if they have great parents that practice these techniques (and there is probably a 1-in-2-billion chance of that being the case) there are even fewer schools that do. Kids are used to being ordered, prodded, pushed, commanded, controlled, subjected, restrained, adjusted, confined, directed, punished, silenced, and finally questioned. They’re like terror suspects minus the water-boarding (or not).
I’m some foreigner, that they’ve only known for a week, sitting them down and essentially saying “we’re going to do things the exact opposite of every thing you’ve previously experienced.” They had no idea what I was getting at. It was kind of like when I first told them we weren’t going to do rewards and punishments back on day one and they all just looked at me like confused puppies. Only then it was cute and funny. This time it was sad.
So What Do I Do?
I think I’ve laid out the biggest three issues. I can’t speak Chinese, my translators don’t know what the fuck is going on, and my kids aren’t used to this sort of thing at all.
So how can I make this work? I don’t know actually. I’m going to keep trying. But short of learning Chinese myself or hiring my own excellent translator I’m not sure what to do. I can’t go back in time and make their parents start them on this system. And I can’t change the way the entire school works.
This is why I’m writing this post. I want your ideas. I know there are some extremely intelligent people who visit this blog and I’m sure you are one of them. Help me.
Leave a comment or email me. Or, if you have no ideas, maybe you could pass this post on to a friend. Thank you!
3 Things Wrong With The Rewards System
Most schools use a rewards and incentives system for teaching children. They are particularly prominent in younger classes where you will see things like star charts and sticker boards. The idea is that the a student earns stars or stickers or happy faces for good behavior and gets nothing (or maybe frown faces) for bad behavior.
Before I talk about some of things wrong with this system, let me first say that it is way better than a strict “do as the authority figure says or get punished” method. It actually tries to establish a consistent set of rules for what constitutes good behavior and leans much more on the rewards side as an incentive. Compared to a system that essentially treats kids like slaves to be yelled at and bullied into behaving, the rewards and incentives approach is a great leap forward (China pun, har har).
The rewards system is to strict authority what democracy is to dictatorship. Sure, democracy is better than dictatorship, but it’s still a piece of shit. Here are three things that are wrong with the rewards system:
1. It Only Teaches One Thing: Obedience
The reward system is supposed to incentivize good behavior but what it really does is teach children that being “good” means following the authority figures’ rules. Now it doesn’t really matter what the teacher defines as good behavior. It might be not talking during class or always raising your hand before asking a question. Sometimes it’s just a reward for the correct answer — which sends a terrible message to the kids that don’t know the correct answer: you’re not good.
This is especially bad when you have a big old heap of arbitrary classroom rules. For example, my Chinese assistants don’t want the kids to talk during their meals. They have a good reason for it: there is only limited time to eat and once the kids start talking they almost always ignore their food. Then lunch will end and won’t be finished and they’ll be hungry the rest of the day. But if you combine this with the rewards system you end rewarding the kids that sit quietly during their meal and punishing (with frowny faces or loss of playtime) the kids that chat while eating.
I don’t know about you guys, but punishing a kid for talking while he’s eating seems like a pretty asshole thing to do. And it certainly isn’t going to teach them anything about morality. The only lesson they will get is do what you’re told and you’ll be rewarded.
What if the rules are rational and fair? Well that certainly would be better, but I’ve just never seen it. Sure there are classroom rules about hitting and fighting — I would consider those “rational” — but there are plenty more that are about things like sitting quietly, listening to the assistants, sharing toys, not speaking out of turn, lining up before going outside, washing hands before food, etc. Again, rewarding a kid for lining up before going outside just teaches them to obey authority, nothing more.
Even if you could establish a set of rational rules, I think the message would be the same. The authority you were learning to obey would be less random and make more sense, but you’d still be learning to obey. Consistent and reasonable authority is absolutely better than random and arbitrary authority, for sure, but the lesson is unchanged.
2. It Punishes The Wrong Person
Wait, what? I’ll explain. If I’m teaching a lesson and my students aren’t listening, if they are talking amongst themselves, or staring bored out the window how is that their fault? I’m the one who is being paid to teach them. It’s my job to make my lessons and engaging and interesting. If the kids are finding my lessons boring or uninteresting I’m pretty sure that it’s my fault, not theirs.
Instead of giving them frowny faces for not listening or stars for paying attention maybe I should just focus on being a better teacher. My students don’t owe me anything, and rewarding them for paying attention to my boring ass flashcard game is just a lazy excuse for being a shitty teacher.
It applies for almost every classroom rule that you might enforce using the rewards system. You can’t settle disputes between children without the threat of a frowny face? Fail. You can’t get the students to wash their hands before eating unless you give them stickers? Fail.
I’m not saying that it’s easy to do. It’s hard as hell. I know. I’m struggling to do it. But I refuse to switch to a system that punishes or rewards the students because of my shortcomings.
3. It Establishes Artificial Consequences
When it comes to kids you hear a lot of talk about having to teach them the “consequences” of their actions. This is always done by making up some bullshit fake consequence and then imposing it on them. This is often the excuse you hear for spanking kids. Besides it being just plain wrong to hit a kid, the excuse of “it teachers them consequences” is so retarded I hate even having to address it.
Guess what everybody? In the “real world” as “mature adults” you don’t get spanked for not behaving. Excluding the one violent relationship we are all forced to participate in with our benevolent political masters, nobody is allowed to use force against you when you “don’t behave.”
What are the types of consequences we do have to face? Well, there are the outright cause and effect ones. For example, if you don’t eat, you die. These are pretty straight forward and no child needs to be taught cause and effect through punishments and rewards. Kids learn cause and effect just by interacting with the world.
There are other types of consequences too, like how your actions affect others emotionally. These aren’t learned as easily as the physical cause and effect consequences, but you don’t need a rewards system to teach them. In fact a rewards system can’t teach these types of consequences. The only way you grow to understand the emotional effects of your actions is through empathy. You have empathy for yourself and understand how others effect you and then you have empathy for others and understand how you effect them. How do you encourage this in kids? That’s probably a topic for another post, but I think you start by showing them empathy.
