Good "discipline" vibrations

[From Rick Marken (950205.1120)]

Bill Powers (950203.1450 MST) --

We are responsible only for those effects we control. No other reading
of the word makes sense.

I had some doubts about Ed Ford's use of the term responsibility for
just this reason.

Me too. Indeed, the subtitle to Ed's most recent book ("Discipline for
home and school") is "Teaching children to respect the rights of others
through _responsible_ thinking based on perceptual control theory".

When a hot-headed control theorist, like myself, hears talk of
"teaching people to think responsibly" he hears it as a code for "teach
people to think the way I think they should think". Teaching
responsible thinking implies (to me) that the teacher knows what
another person should control for and that "discipline" (punishment)
will be used if the person doesn't control for what the teacher thinks
(responsibly) should be controlled for. Nazi's knew how to teach
responsible thinkng; Muslim fundamentalists are teaching Salman
Rushdie how to think responsibly.

Of course, Ed's book is not about how to be a Nazi or a Muslim
fundamentalist. But, as Bill says in his forward to Ed's book.

"If you just listen to the words used in this book, you might get an
uncomfortable feeling... Discipline, establishing rules, obedience,
making committments, responsibility... they mean _shape up_!"

Bill might have been talking to me when he wrote this. Now,a fter
seeing the presentation by Ed and his coleagues last year in Durango,
and after reading Bill's description of Ed's program in the Forward,
I think I have a much better idea of what Ed is up to -- and I like it!
Here's how Bill described Ed's "discipline" program in the Forward:

"Achieving discipline in the classroom is no longer a question of
cowing children into sitting quietly in rows; it is a question of
communicating to children their own power to make choices and
decisions, to pick workable goals and achieve them, to find a reasonable
and pleasant way to live with others...".

That is, Ed's program is about teaching kids how to be in control while
allowing others to be in control too. Ed might not describe what he
does (which is to teach cooperative control) the way I would describe it,
but what he does is apparently what I would do -- which is sure more than
I'm doing;-).

Best

Rick

Tom Bourbon [950206.1541]

[From Rick Marken (950205.1120)]

Bill Powers (950203.1450 MST) --

We are responsible only for those effects we control. No other reading
of the word makes sense.

I had some doubts about Ed Ford's use of the term responsibility for
just this reason.

Me too. Indeed, the subtitle to Ed's most recent book ("Discipline for
home and school") is "Teaching children to respect the rights of others
through _responsible_ thinking based on perceptual control theory".

When a hot-headed control theorist, like myself, hears talk of
"teaching people to think responsibly" he hears it as a code for "teach
people to think the way I think they should think". Teaching
responsible thinking implies (to me) that the teacher knows what
another person should control for and that "discipline" (punishment)
will be used if the person doesn't control for what the teacher thinks
(responsibly) should be controlled for. Nazi's knew how to teach
responsible thinkng; Muslim fundamentalists are teaching Salman
Rushdie how to think responsibly.

I, too, thought Ed would be telling us about something equivalent to, for
example, the kind of "responsible thinking" that campus Political
Correctness Officers try to teach to American university students. But:

Of course, Ed's book is not about how to be a Nazi or a Muslim
fundamentalist.

Or a PC thought policeperson. Thank goodness!

Instead, as Bill Powers said in the foreword of Ed's book, it is about how:

"Achieving discipline in the classroom is no longer a question of
cowing children into sitting quietly in rows; it is a question of
communicating to children their own power to make choices and
decisions, to pick workable goals and achieve them, to find a reasonable
and pleasant way to live with others...".

That is the most any people, acting as controllers of their own
perceptions, can do. All of us control many of our perceptions, all of the
time. Our actions for the sake of controlling perceptions also produce
consequences in the environment that we do not intend, or do not know, all
of the time. No matter whether they are intended, or unintended, the
environmental consequences of one person's actions can affect variables that
are part of another person's perceptual control. PCT can help us better
understand what happens in that circumstance, but it does not -- cannot --
tell us which perceptions a particular person should or should not control,
or which is the appropriate or best way for one person to treat another.

Later,

Tom