Punishment- what's the point?

Punishment- what’s the point?

If you haven’t figured it out yet, you soon will be able to put the list together of my pet peeves with schools and the education process. They all have to do with the umbrella phrases I use- either Mental Health in Education or Social and Emotional Learning. Either way you choose to call it, it refers to the mind and the emotions and their connection to the process of learning and of course teaching.

So far the peeves I have revealed here are competition in the classroom and effects of emotions and emotional experiences on learning.
Another of my ‘favourites’ is the issue of punishment, especially corporal punishment. I am well aware of the mass of hornets that start buzzing around as soon as I say those words. But as with all other issues of Mental Health and/or Social and Emotional Learning we cannot leave our heads buried in the sand or elsewhere.

I will release the hornets with a few thoughts. We need to understand what is punishment and its real effects on our young people. There are still parents and teachers who believe that the only way to motivate students to learn is by threat of some form of punishment, either immediately or later in life or by instilling fear.



Some of the types of abuse that our children are being constantly subjected to in schools include:
Verbal abuse: insults, put-downs, or name-calling. We tend to brush these off as insignificant partly because the effects of these are not so obvious or instant. But each of us could think back to how badly we felt to be called a derogatory name or to be insulted or put-down.
Isolation/seclusion: We teach our children from early on not to play with a friend when we are not pleased with him. Teachers and parents use the practice of ignoring or isolating a child when he most needs attention and someone to help him through a bad time. “Time out” is convenient for adults when they are too busy or preoccupied to figure out how to really help the child through the emotional distress that is causing the disruptive or inappropriate or unacceptable behaviour at the moment.
Invalidation: Students receive subtle and not so subtle messages about their self-worth and academic potential from the school environment. Minority students are typically discouraged from having and pursuing big goals academically. Females are still not as encouraged as males to enter fields that involve Math and Science.
One of the real sad aspects of the issue of punishment is the way some adults have convinced themselves that the punishment is for the child’s good. Unfortunately this has been instilled in them when they were being punished and was the only way to resolve the pain in their minds and to continue to survive through it.

Using Multiple Intelligences Theory Wisely

Multiple Intelligences

Blogs are good for ranting, so they say. I promised myself mine would not only be a rant (useful sometimes)but be a source of interesting information and prompts for rational thought. But with the way things are in our education systems around the globe, (not just in my little part of the Caribbean for sure) it is difficult, nay impossible, not to rant on a regular basis.
One hears and sees so many things in our classrooms and from the general public that makes us either cringe, shake our head in bewilderment, want to scream to make sure somebody hears and fixes things, laugh with joy, cry with pain or feel pride. The point being that education being what it is (not what it is supposed to be) is fraught with dilemmas and events.

It would take a multi-volume tome to outline all that needs to be thought about on a constant basis in educating our children. Some of us make it more bearable on ourselves by choosing one issue to focus on and advocate for, hoping that there are many others looking after all the other issues.

But I digress. My latest cringe moment came when I heard that one school was setting down a ‘law’ that every lesson plan written by every teacher in every subject must address all of Howard Gardner’s 8 multiple intelligences ( yes, I know he is working on increasing that number, but that is for another time). I want to hope that the implications of this are so obvious to everyone that I should not even be writing this here. But I know better than that. I do not think that that is what good ole Howard had in mind and I suspect he too would cringe if he heard this.

Outside of all the concerns about what a decision like that implies and causes to happen, my main worry is the fact that so often in trying to improve our education systems we go from one extreme of rigidity to another. Another concern could be how we impose structures and instructions on our teachers without the least amount of training and support. I admit I do not know what is in place in this school to accompany this directive. I am speaking generally here. Sometimes I get so flabbergasted when I hear things that my brain shuts off from overwhelm and I do not follow up and ask the right questions.

That is not the point either. I have seen enough and experienced enough to worry about the lack of insight that goes with hearing about a new theory and insisting that it be implemented in the school.

What should we consider when incorporating Multiple Intelligences theory into the curriculum?
1. Individuals should be encouraged to use their preferred intelligences in learning. Notice it says should be encouraged to use their preferred intelligence- not forced to use all
2. Instructional activities should appeal to different forms of intelligence. – again it doesn’t say every activity should include every intelligence.
3. Assessment of learning should measure multiple forms of intelligence- it still doesn’t say all the forms in any one instance.

Or as quoted from ERIC Digest (http://www.ericdigests.org/1998-1/multiple.htm Amy Brualdi:1996) “Many learning styles can be found within one classroom. Therefore, it is impossible, as well as impractical, for a teacher to accommodate every lesson to all of the learning styles found within the classroom. Nevertheless the teacher can show students how to use their more developed intelligences to assist in the understanding of a subject which normally employs their weaker intelligences (Lazear, 1992).”

I hope therefore that the powers that be in that school and all other schools take some time to understand the theory of Multiple Intelligences and examine rational ways to incorporate it into the curriculum. Also to explore some of the research and the cautions about going to the ‘other extreme’ with teaching to the multiple intelligences.

Here are some examples:

1. You don’t have to teach or learn something in all eight ways, just see what the possibilities are, and then decide which particular pathways interest you the most, or seem to be the most effective teaching or learning tools. Thomas Armstrong http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm

2. You won't always find ways of including every intelligence in your curriculum plans. But if this model helps you reach into one or two intelligences that you might not otherwise have tapped, then it has served its purpose very well indeed! Thomas Armstrong : Seven ways to approach curriculum http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/articles/7_ways.htm First published in Educational Leadership- 1994