Edpsy 399 OL - Spring 2000

Tom Anderson, Instructor

Leonard Fretzin

Forum 3 - Lesson 3

Lesson 3 q1 Required - Control actions

Date: Sunday, February 25, 2001

Speaking of briar patches, I think that the subject of controlling human behavior is about as thorny a problem as can be imagined. Maybe 'Brer Rabbit' can outwit the 'Brer Fox' by having him throw her into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit had a thick furry coat to protect her. But we humans are as denuded of fur as Plato's plucked chickens and are certain to get scratched up by the thorns.

I would like to address two problems that I see in operant control of behavior. First, the comparison between animal species and humans is prone to error; and Secondly, the operant experimental environment and chronology cannot be made identical between animal and human species without the risk of being taken off in handcuffs to the International Court in the Hague.

The human species is the only one that I know of that has historically used all sorts of painful and even horrific punishments in the attempt to bring individuals in line with the requirements of human society.

But every social animal practices tolerance of its fellow kind. Lions of the pride and wolves of the pack do not tear each other apart with their claws and fangs. Ants of the nest, termites, and bees of the hive do not sting or bite each other with their mandibles. Whales of a pod and dolphins do not beat each other with their fins.

Thomas More spoke wisely about the execution of thieves in the England of 1500:

"One day when I was dining….there was present an English counselor-at-law, who took occasion to praise…..the severe execution of justice upon thieves…..who, were being hanged so fast that there were sometimes twenty on one gibbet. He could not understand how there could be so many thieves everywhere when so few escaped hanging. Upon this I made bold to speak….the remedy is not effectual because the severity is too great. No punishment however severe is sufficient to restrain a man from robbery who can find no other livelihood…..severe and horrible punishments are enacted against theft, when it would be much better to enable every man to earn his livelihood, instead of being driven to the fatal necessity of stealing and then dying for it" (More p.7)

When it comes to children, who have diminished rights under law in all countries, but increased protection, at least in theory, the instinct to punish misbehavior has a long and lurid past. Literature is full of accounts of punishment, which I suspect are often autobiographical. Anyone familiar with such popular works as Tom Sawyer or David Copperfield may remember the graphical scenes of corporal punishment. There are many other references in books and film.

In my childhood I never attended a school that used corporal punishment. I think that all the children in a school quickly learn of incidents where someone was punished by paddling or similar means and it becomes the current subject of rumors and stories. Perhaps this is the reason that I cannot see such methods as necessary.

Others, who have been brought up in a corporal punishment environment, sometimes think that these methods are useful.

And teachers cannot be blamed for occasionally wanting to whack one of their 'nasty little monsters'.

As a teacher in Chicago, I'm glad that physical punishment is illegal. It is a can of worms with all kinds of legal, behavioral, emotional, and moral problems. I don't want the freedom to it use it, and I don't want to be required to use it.

There isn't one species of animal that I have ever heard of that punishes its young.

On the contrary, the higher mammals in particular are remarkably protective, affectionate, devoted, and tolerant of their offspring. Any stories to the contrary, such as those about male cats devouring kittens in order to have intercourse with the female, are either apocryphal or as rare an event as the occasional mass murders committed in human society.

"The old crow loves his young and the ape his cubs." (More p. 6)

Let's put away corporal punishment, and the dream of returning to it, once and for all.

Punishment, or course, can entail many other methods and stimuli which are aversive without involving the elicitation of physical pain. Models taken from animal behavior or physiology and subsequently transferred to the human species can be notorious incorrect.

This error occurs in physiology, for example, when scientist test a new drug for its benefits and side effects, and it is even more likely to be problematic when the results of animal behavior experiments are transferred to apply to human behavior. After all, no one would attempt to rank psychology in terms of objectivity or scientific accuracy with medicine or chemistry.

Operant conditioning experiments in animals can only apply in a general sense to human beings. In use with humans there is a serious time delay between the operant and the punishment, whether it is an aversive stimulus like corporal punishment, or the removal of pleasant stimulus, such as the loss of privilege.

Also with humans there is concern with conscious thought processes and emotional conditions (i.e. mental states) which are totally ignored by Skinner in operant conditioning because they are not observable behavior. Skinner did not care at all what was happening inside the 'black box'.

It is obvious that we cannot attempt to replicate the experimental enclosures used from animals and apply them to human research, let alone use the same degree of aversive stimuli that some researchers apply freely to animals.

In order to get around these objections, educators generalize and internalize the definition of punishment.

"A consequence is only a punishment if it reduces the future frequency of a behavior….a punishment can be something the teacher does or says. It can be something other students do or say, or a punishment can be something the student thinks or feels himself. A punishment is anything that results in a behavior taking place less and less often in the future." (Sprick p.92)

Like every teacher, I have to face and deal with discipline problems on a frequent basis.

And being a high school science teacher I have fewer options than many elementary school teachers do. For example, I cannot issue detentions at will for misbehavior, nor can I use time outs or quiet rooms, or the threat of depriving students of recess or lunch.

Although I originally objected to lowering grades because of violation of rules of behavior, I have come to use it where necessary and have found that it does reduce the overall amount of misbehavior in the classroom.

Disruptive behavior during class is countered with the threat of referral to the Dean of Discipline and a telephone call to the parent's home. The effectiveness of this procedure varies. In an inner city school, the parents or guardians of the students are frequently found to be less concerned with their children than are parents in more affluent suburban schools.

If disruptive behavior continues the referral to the Dean and Assistant Principal is made; the problem here is that consequences are in control of the administration, which from my viewpoint has not been very effective in creating a disciplined environment in our school.

Continuing misbehavior, and especially disruptive behavior is punished by a zero on the most recent assignment. I use a spreadsheet grade book that is posted on the wall after every test (about every three weeks) so that students can keep track of their grade in the course. Students are identified only by I.D. numbers, so they remain fairly anonymous. The letters 'bhav' instead of a grade indicates a behavior violation.

During labs, violation of lab safety rules is punished after one or two warnings by a zero on the lab. The number of warnings that I give before punishment depends on the danger the misbehavior can create. So that with horseplay in the lab I usually only give the offending students one warning before they earn a 'hors' for the lab.

Does this work? Well, yes it does but it requires continuous application. Over months I do see a reduction in the frequency of misbehavior, but it is never eliminated. Hey, isn't this true even in English public schools that use the most aversive punishments like caning!

If punishment were the answer it should work better than it does. Let's look into the connection between behavior problems and academic problems. They seem to go hand in hand.

TEACHERS FIRST!

Anderson, Tom - Commentary on Punishment

Aristophanes - The Clouds

Charles, C.M., Senter, Gail W., Barr, Karen B. - Building Classroom Discipline

ISBN: 0801330041; Publisher: Addison-Wesley Longman, Incorporated 1998

McEwan, E. K., Damer, M. - Managing Unmanageable Students; Corwin Press, Inc.,

More, Thomas - Utopia; Appleton-Century-Crofts, Meredith Corporation,

New York, 1949

Sprick, R. - Discipline in the secondary classroom; West Nyack, NY: The Center for