PCT & Discipline

[Edward_E_Ford]

From Ed Ford (940607.10.15)

To All...

My latest child is due tomorrow. Discipline For Home
And School is now a reality. The subtitle reads:
Teaching children to respect the rights of others
through responsible thinking based on Perceptual
Control Theory. Bill was kind enough to write the
foreword. It reflects a complete discipline program
based on two successful applications in multicultural
inner city schools with highly transitory
populations, significant number living in poverty,
growing number of youth gangs, and 1/3 new teachers
(13 out of 36) in the first school at which I worked.
I first began at a school (grades 4,5,&6) and then
several months into the program began at another(K
through 6). Using PCT as a basis, it has been more
than successful. Teachers are spending more time
teaching, children are learning, and those who don't
want to learn, are given a choice. Stay and obey
rules or go to the social skills class where you stay
until you are willing to return to class, negotiate a
plan to get along and respect the rights of others
(so the children can learn and the teacher can
teach).

The school psychologist at the first school worked up
some figures, based on the behavior of 15 of the most
acting out children, to show the district office (who
requested the proof) whether the program was worth
the effort. By the way, the funding came not from
the federal, state, or school district, but from the
local PTAs and the Teachers' Association. The
workshops I did were the part that was funded, the
rest of my time including weekly meetings with staff,
class room demonstrations, time training and working
with the social skills classroom teachers was
volunteered. I'll post the results on the net in a
few days.

The book is $10, shipping and handling regardless of
amount is $3.50, prepayment by check only. The only
exception are school district purchase orders. Order
from Brandt Publishing, 10209 N. 56th St.,
Scottsdale, AZ 85253.

Never have I worked with such highly professional,
dedicated people as with the teachers and staff of
these two schools. Those who criticize the public
schools haven't worked with these teachers. Not only
did the PTA fund most of the workshops, but parents
were involved in the program from the very beginning.
The district office totally ignored what we were
doing from the very start and only recently asked me
to do a workshop for the district in August. There
has developed a groundswell of enthusiasm throughout
the district and now the middle school wants help(the
teachers, that is!). I will not work in a school
without strong administrative commitment. As yet,
this has been luke warm.

Take care, Ed

Ed Ford, 10209 N. 56th st., Scottsdale, AZ 85253
Phone 602 991-4860

[Bill_Leach1]

<[Bill Leach 940607.19:12 EST(EDT)]

Ed Ford (940607.10.15)

In light of some of the recent comments concerning "practical
application" of PCT to "real world" situations, I hope that you will
consider keeping us posted about developments with this work.

Failures of the program to deal with a problem are likely even more
important from a scientific point of view than are the successes.

I can't think of a more important "real world" place for PCT to make a
contribution than in the education of youth. Keep it up!

-bill

[Richard_Marken]

[From Rick Marken (940608.2300)]

Ed Ford (940607.10.15) --

Teaching children to respect the rights of others
through responsible thinking based on Perceptual
Control Theory.

What is "responsible thinking"? I must admit that I get
a bit nervous when I hear this phrase. I tend to think
of this as the kind of thing that is said about the way people
should think who don't currently think the way we think they
should think (I think). I, for example, think that the Pope is
not doing responsible thinking regarding family planning and
birth control. His thinking, it seems to me, leads to
behaviors that disrespect the rights of others (in this
and future generations) to a decent life. Is the Pope's
thinking irresponsible or is mine? Can your program help
either one of us (the one thinking irresponsibly, of course)
to think responsibly?

Teachers are spending more time
teaching, children are learning, and those who don't
want to learn, are given a choice. Stay and obey
rules or go to the social skills class where you stay
until you are willing to return to class, negotiate a
plan to get along and respect the rights of others

Except for a difference in terminology, this sounds similar
to the program that was used in my school and in my children's
school. The social skills class was called "detention". But we
didn't learn social skills in detention. Is that the innovation;
the social skills? Just from the description in your post it is
not obvious how your approach to discipline differs from
the behaviorist approach. Not that there would be anything wrong
with that. I just think it would help those interested in the
relationship between PCT and education or "management" (because
it seems that you are managing the kids) if you could point out, in
the promotion for the book, how PCT informs your approach to
discipline. Otherwise it could seem like you're just providing
a new version of the old behaviorist approach to discipline -- which
works pretty well, really, when done with some respect for the
kids.

Best

Rick

[Bill_Leach1]

<[Bill Leach 940609.22:54 EST(EDT)]

[Rick Marken (940608.2300)]

Your reply to Ed (as well as your reply to a posting of mine) underscores
a serious problem with application of PCT to real world situations in
anything other than a research effort.

PCT is NON-JUDGEMENTAL in an ethical/moral sense any yet humans can not
successfully interact with each other without some ethical/moral
standards in place. Indeed, "society" is an attempt to provide a
consistent set of such standards and a means of enforcing same.

Even in making the above assertion, the term "successfully interact"
requires some sort of standard that is independent of PCT itself.

The problem that we are likely always going to face is that none of us
will agree completely with a single set of ethical and moral standards.

I doubt that even here we could come up with a generally accepted set.

If you go back to Aristole's "The goal of all human behaviour is the
happiness of the individual." and accept that:

Creating conflict in another human decreases that human's happiness you
would have a start except that it is quite likely that not all conflict
is necessarily bad. After all, a significant period of our initial years
was spent in period of high conflict.

I also suspect that it might even be provable eventually that stroke
victims and many injury victims that "do the impossible" in recovery are
really managing to get into such a high state of conflict that
reorganization "kicks in" in a big way.

Which also makes me wonder if cases of extreme psychosis might not be a
situation where the conflict was so great that the brain reorganized
cogitive processing to be completely independent of external perception?

-bill

[_Avery_Andrews]

[Avery Andrews 940610.0930]
(Rick Marken (940608.2300))

  >except for a difference in terminology, this sounds similar
  >to the program that was used in my school and in my children's
  >school. The social skills class was called "detention".

In my school, detention was tacked on to the end of the school day,
rather than being an alternative to the ordinary classes. This might
make a difference.

  Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au

[Tom_BOURBON3]

Tom Bourbon [940610.1730]

<[Bill Leach 940609.22:54 EST(EDT)]

[Rick Marken (940608.2300)]

Your reply to Ed (as well as your reply to a posting of mine) underscores
a serious problem with application of PCT to real world situations in
anything other than a research effort.

PCT is NON-JUDGEMENTAL in an ethical/moral sense

Bill, Rick has already replied to this, but I want to second his comments
and add a few of my own. It is true that PCT is non-judgemental. PCT is a
theory and as such can make no judgements, just as _it_ has nothing to "say"
about specific situations to which _we_ might try to apply it. _We_
(people who study PCT) do the judging and saying and applying. The point
of these remarks might seem obvious, but consider them in light of the
remainder of your paragraph:

any yet humans can not
successfully interact with each other without some ethical/moral
standards in place.

Agreed. But _which_ standards are in place can vary all over the place --
the full range of possibilities probably has not been explored; I suspect
that reorganization in individuals who interact will probably turn up some
additional successful standards that we have not imagined.

Indeed, "society" is an attempt to provide a
consistent set of such standards and a means of enforcing same.

Here we come to one of the recurring threads on this net. From my
understanding of the phenomenon of control, and of PCT as an explanation of
control, I (not PCT) identify "society" as a perception, not as a something
that acts to control. Individuals act to control their own perceptions.
When enough individuals act to control perceptions that somehow involve some
of the same environmental variables, an observer of the actions of that
ensemble of controllers might conclude that a "society" or "culture" or
"gang" was present andf controlling. (Jeff Vancouver might have gotten such
an impression when several of us replied -- independently of one another --
to his self-introductory post a few days ago. Really, Jeff, we _did not_
get together and gang up on you,no matter how much it might have looked or
felt that way! There is no "gang of three or four" acting to control what
is said on this net.) :-))

. . .

Creating conflict in another human decreases that human's happiness you
would have a start except that it is quite likely that not all conflict
is necessarily bad. After all, a significant period of our initial years
was spent in period of high conflict.

But, as has been mentioned several times in the thread on rearing children,
others often act in what they see as the best interest of a child, and at
the same time create conflict. Rick said some good things about that idea.
There is no way for a person who acts in an attempt to create conflict in
another to be sure the other will feel conflict. Conflict-induction is not
a lineal Cause-Effect process; feelings of conflict are in the sensed bodily
states of the beholder, not in a lineal causal link between people.

Also, teachers, gurus, masters, and sages of many varieties use _attempts_
at creating disturbances to variables controlled by their students as a
means of "inducing" error -- and hence conflict of a sort -- in the hope that
the student will reorganize away from old ways of thinking and toward -- who
can say what? Bill Powers is a master at that technique.

Time to run.

Later,

Tom

P.S. Bill L, I saw no problems in the material you asked me about in a
private post.

[Bill_Leach1]

<[Bill Leach 940611.18:45 EST(EDT)]

Tom Bourbon [940610.1730]

I particularly like the efforts of Ayn Rand in her philosophy of
Objectivism at trying to determine a minimum set of moral/ethical
standards that members of a society should have a right to demand from
other members of society.

Probably one of the more surprising things that one sees in her work is
the very small number of "laws" that she felt could be justified on a
rational and logical basis.

As in any philosophy, it is necessary to agree to accept some axioms.
Most of hers are quite easy to accept for anyone with a "hard science"
bent as all of the most fundamental ones are just her assertion of the
applicability of logical reasoning to the issue of philosophy.

Her next step is a bit tougher to accept for some people but she defines
the term human. She goes on to develop her moral/ethical standards based
upon her definition of what it is to be human.

She goes a bit further with a rational development of "how humans SHOULD
behave" but are behaviour traits for which there should be no
"corrective" force allowed.

I will have to try to go back and review some of her work, in particular
the exact meaning of her fundamental maxim that "no human has the right
to initiate the use of FORCE against another human". I am virtually
certain that she did specify that this maxim applied to adults but I am
not sure if by force she limited the definition to actual physical force
or not.

So... as to "which standards" I am probably pretty much in agreement with
most people here in that I believe that at least the vast majority of
existing standards should not exist with the force of law at all.

I do think that there are ways to arrive at some reasonable set of
standards but agree that no matter what the set, someone will feel unduly
restricted.

Yes, "Government", and "Society" are both the sort of terms that everone
"knows" the meaning for and that knowledge is usually in error. However,
I am one of the people that has been through this before, feel that I
pretty much understand how others on this server view the concepts and
thus feel that I should be able to talk about groups of people behaving
in concert.

The difficulty in much of these discussions that prompt the immediate
responses to terms like "society" is that these discussions are often not
intended to be "about PCT" but rather more of the nature; Given the
general belief structure that I have (moral and ethical), what does PCT
tell me about the structure and what does PCT enable me to conclude about
"social systems".

-bill

P.S.

Thanks