I don’t know why it’s ocuring to
me, that signals
that are coming to comparator from one person always produce a conflict
on
some level, by “trying” to set a new goal, which can be
“accepted” by
another person or not.
But still I think that conflict
is there, because it seems to me that another person must have controlled
something else before, and it’s somehow strange to me, that she would
just stop controlling whatever she was controlling and start to control a
new perception that was attempted to “force” on him. I think
that previous controled perception is stil running and thus disturbing
“forced” perception from one person all the
time.
For example , if teacher says :
"Tom, please stop doing that with your
pencil" or “stop talking to your neighbour”, Tom would
probably stop doing
it, but still desire to do that is “running”, although he
accepted new
reference signal. But in the moment when teacher doesn’ pay attention
to
him, he will do it again. It seems to me that internal conflict is
“running”
all the time, giving once’s priority to one reference signal and in
another
moment to another.
I think teacher just thinks that he’s controling Tom all the time, but
in
fact I could say that he doesn’t. Teacher is just controlling his
perception.
Whether
you can control another person’s behavior this way depends on
the other person’s structure of goals.
Is it right to say that when teacher is trying to control students, his
more
or less succesfull attempt depends on used means of control and
students
control hierarchical system (characteristics) and goals ?
So if I understand right,
teacher who does care about students goals (not
conflicting with their goals) would exhibit non conflicting behaviour.
And probably if some goals
between teacher and students are “identical”, can
we say that teacher and students are cooperating ? Can we say also when
teacher and student are cooperating also in case when goals of teacher
are “in line” with goals of sutdent, so helping student to
easier reach the goal.
And any teacher who doesn’t care
about students goals (their goals are
conflicting), will produce more and more violent atmosphere, if
students
refuse to generate desired behaviour.
Students will disrupt
(probaly talk
or do something else) and teacher will try harder to control
students
behaviour reducing talk and unvanted movings of students to zero.
More
teacher is “pushing” with his perceptual control, more
conflicting atmoshere
in classroom, more possible violence ?
When a teacher tells a
student that a behavior is not acceptable
in the classroom, and sends the student to the RTC to work out a
solution,
the teacher is controlling a perception of the student’s
behavior.>>>>>>>>>>
When teacher doesn’t take student goals into account, and there is
no
identical goals, and teacher is pushing more and more with his
perceptual
control conflicting with student goals, and students do not accept
his
control, can we say that students probably exhibit behaviour that is
not
acceptable by teacher and he kindly send student to RTC
?
But in my experiances I booked
also cases when teacher did behave kindly and
nicely, but student didn’t want to leave the classroom. What can we do
then
? Use brutal force to get him to RTC. I’m sure that Ed Fords program has
too
encounter a case, when student didn’t want to leave the classroom ?
What
program predicts in this case?
But if teacher is trying to
consider students goal, he inded "want to avoid
conflict and violence" with interpreting the resistance as a signal
to cease
trying to control, and mybe find some identical goals or student goals
that
are supported by teachers attempt of control, so to enable students
perceptual control, would we need RTC ?
[From Bill Powers (2007.06.21.0630 MDT)]
Boris Hartman (2007.06.21) –
You can ask a person to do something for you, and if that person is not
disturbed by doing it, it will be done. “Please pass the
potatoes” is an attempt to control the behavior of another person by
getting that person to pick up the dish of potatoes and hand it to you.
This does not conflict with anything that person wants, or if it does the
conflict is quickly resolved (the person stops eating for a moment,
passes the dish, then starts eating again – simple sequence control,
which resolves many conflicts).
You seem to be assuming that a person controls only one variable at a
time, and that there is only one action that can be used to control a
variable. Neither is true. We control dozens of variables at once, maybe
hundreds, and if one action is interfered with we simply switch to a
different action that will accomplish the same thing. Every person
contains the means of reorganizing to resolve any conflicts that do
occur. If all these statements were not true it would be impossible for
people to live together. I mean more impossible than it is now.
Fred Nickols gave me an example of a teacher who understands the problem:
this teacher tells the student to stop running, and then walks with him
to the classroom and explains to the teacher there that the student is
late because of being stopped in the hallway. That resolves the conflict.
A longer-term solution might arise if the student realized that the cause
of the conflict can be removed by allowing more time to get to class and
not allowing himself to be diverted.
To say that the teacher is “just controlling his perception”
implies that the perception is not a reasonably correct representation of
what is really happening. While that may sometimes be true, it’s not true
enough to make a difference. Most of the time the perceptions we control
correspond to something outside us that affects other people, too, so
when we control the perception, we also are controlling something of
importance to other people.
Controlling perception does not mean taking one kind of perception and
turning it into a different kind of perception. It means acting to change
the amount or state of a given kind of perception, which still remains
the same kind of perception. When we change from controlling one
perception to controlling a different one, we’re turning one control
system off and another one on, not altering the kind of perception that a
single system is controlling.
Yes. It’s better not to say “trying to control students”
because a “student” is an object, not a variable. The teacher
is trying to control something about the student that can vary. So the
teacher might try to control the goals that the student is trying to
achieve, which will cause a conflict, or the teacher might try to control
the behavior of the student (the visible actions), which will not cause a
conflict if the student has some other equally easy means of achieving
the same goals (or if there is no disturbance, of course). If, however,
the behavior that the teacher wants the student to perform or stop is
important for something else the student is also controlling at the same
time, and there is no alternate way of controlling it, conflict will
occur and the student will not be able to comply with the teacher’s
request. The student will be in conflict, just like the student running
in the hall.
So that was a very long way to say “yes.”
Yes. The teacher would at least be alert to the possibility of conflict,
and when it appeared, would back away and try some other approach. It’s
not easy to know what a student’s goals are even if you care about them,
so conflicts often happen accidentally. But usually they are resolved so
quickly that they don’t cause a problem.
It’s extremely unlikely that different people will have identical goals.
Cooperation requires reducing the loop gain so that small disagreements
over the goal do not lead to large opposing efforts. This is why fanatics
who try to join forces often end up fighting each other, like the Shiites
in Iraq, or the Sunis. Or sometimes, PCT fanatics.
Reducing individual loop gains is compensated for by the fact that
multiple people are responding to errors, so the net amount of
cooperative control may not change much. It might even increase. However,
a better way of achieving cooperation is by specialization: The group
task is divided into subtasks that are independent of each other, so that
one task is carried out by a smaller group, or just one individual. That
reduces the potential for conflict.
For similar reasons, it’s not easy to “help” a control system
achieve a goal. One system by itself is in equilibrium, the error being
just large enough to cause enough action to keep the error as small as it
is. Anything that changes the amount of error will also change the amount
of action in the same direction. If a disturbance causes the error to
increase, the action will increase. If the disturbance causes the error
to decrease, the action will decrease. In both cases the result will be
that the change in the action opposes the effect of the disturbance –
and note that this applies even if the disturbance is making the error
smaller. If you help a control system control something, you are likely
to end up controlling it all by yourself, with the other control system
relaxing completely (Tom Sawyer figured that one out for himself).
It’s not changing the behavior that bothers the students, but changing
the variable they are controlling by using that behavior. They will
change their behavior to satisfy the teacher if they can do so without
giving up control of what matters to them. The smart teacher will figure
out how to allow the students to go on controlling what matters to them,
while still behaving in a way that satisfies the teacher. I suggested to
one teacher, for example, that when students talk to each other in class,
the teacher should ask them to quietly write a note and pass it to the
other person, instead of talking out loud. The teacher looked shocked,
and then realized that this would disrupt the class much less than
talking would.
That is true.
Yes. But don’t forget “the questions.” The first question, to
be asked in a neutral, interested way, is “What are you doing?”
As the student tries to answer this question, the student must
necessarily to step back and observe what he or she is doing. That puts
the student’s awareness in a different point of view, instead of being
identified with the control systems that are acting. There are other
questions that follow this one, but I think this one is the most
important because it redirects reorganization to a place where it might
do some good. Very often, asking this question is enough to put an end to
the disruptive behavior, and the student is not sent to the RTC because
the disruption is not repeated. Sometimes, when the teacher just yells at
the student to stop doing something, the student will say “You’re
supposed to ask the questions.” I heard quite a few teachers tell
that story about their own classrooms. Asking the question, particularly
the first one, works. And the students like it a lot more than being
yelled at.
Yes, this was discussed at the meeting I just observed. What happens is
that the school administration is called in. The RTP program specifies
that students who refuse to go to the RTC, or who continue disrupting
while in the RTC, are sent home and their parents must come with them to
the school to negotiate re-entry. In extreme cases the police are called.
This procedure requires administrative approval, which is why the teacher
can’t simply send the student home.
One objective of the RTP is to allow teachers to teach instead of
handling discipline problems, and of course to allow the other students
to learn. When this program reaches its limits, the normal procedures of
the community are then followed. What other choice is there?
Yes, because while the teacher is working on one student’s problems, the
other 20 or 30 students are sitting there enjoying the show and not being
taught anything (else). Problems that are not quickly resolved by asking
the questions are turned over to the teacher in the RTC, and the
classroom teacher goes back immediately to teaching. Teachers often say,
sometimes with tears in their eyes, that at last they are free to do what
they love to do, which is teaching. Many schools with other discipline
programs, or none, are a total mess with teachers doing hardly anything
but dealing with disruptions. The halls outside the principal’s office in
an ordinary school are, by the end of day, lined with students waiting to
be handled by the principle or vice-principal, which consists mostly of
being sent to a detention room where they must sit without talking until
the end of the day. In other words, jail. In an RTP school the halls are
empty and the principal typically sees no students about behavior
problems.
I don’t want to represent RTP as perfect; it isn’t. But it’s come a long
way from its beginnings, and is still changing and open to change. It
does calm schools down a lot, even very bad schools in tough
neighborhoods.
Best,
Bill P.
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