[From Bruce Nevin (010408 18:18 EDT)]
Rick Marken (01.04.08.0940)--
I am [...] controlling a perception that is disturbed by those
who disguise their own controlling by saying that they are
"giving a choice" and then saying "I see you have chosen..."
when the "wrong" choice is made. When Bruce Nevin recently brought
this topic up again, I responded to his post as the means of
keeping a perception -- the perception of being honest about
one's own controlling -- under control. Bruce Nevin's post,
and my reply to it, had nothing to do with RTP.
I agree.
Bruce posted a
document that was apparently to be read by Spanish conquistators
to conquered Indians explaining to the Indians that they "had a
choice": they could obey the Spanish King or becoming slaves. The
document explicitly said that the conquistators did not consider
themselves reponsible for the violence that they would inflict
if the Indians chose not to obey the King (of course, all this
was said to the Indians in a language they could not understand
anyway). The content of the Spanish document was a huge dis-
turbance to my the perception of being honest about one's own
controlling and so I responded to Bruce's post. Since Bruce
presumably posted it to illustrate what was wrong with the idea
of "giving a choice" I was actually responding positively to
Bruce by acknowledging the delicious evil revealed in the Spanish
document.
Since the subject of RTP has come up in the sequel, however, why not compare the two situations.
Columbus: unintelligible language
RTP Teacher: language that is understood
Columbus: first mention
RTP Teacher: reminder of principles, social arrangements, and processes that have been extensively discussed before, and which are among the things that the teacher is teaching
Columbus: Immediate application of lethal force is the purpose
RTP Teacher: Coercion is a background possibility if a kid continues disruption without reference to the RTP principles, social arrangments, and processes, or explicitly rejects them outright.
RTP Student:
Something like "oops!" -> life goes on as usual.
Second "Oops!" -> asked/told to go to the RTC.
Something like "To hell with you!" -> told to go to the RTC.
Refuse to go to the RTC -> Removed by coercion.
Arawak person in Haiti (or others later):
Robbed, then enslaved or killed regardless of what they say or do.
RTP Teacher: Statement of purpose is to teach.
Columbus: Statement of purpose is to enrich the King and Queen of Spain (and himself, and those with him).
RTP Teacher: Conduct afterward is to teach.
Columbus: Conduct afterward is to "live like a soldier" (in words by a contemporary observer), meaning, with slaves feeding and supporting him, even physically carrying him around, digging for gold, and being added to cargo shipped back to Spain.
RTP Teacher: Says the aim is that the student should learn to think responsibly. Use of the "choice" statement is optional, and some testimony suggests that it is rare.
Columbus: Says the aim is that the Spaniards should be blameless. Historical evidence suggests that it was used repeatedly in a formulaic kind of way.
RTP schools: Described as calm, productive, with all parties treating one another with respect, etc.
Haiti, etc.: People once described as beautiful, strong, generous, intelligent are described as ugly, vicious, stupid. Population reduced by 90-96% in a few years, then gone, supplanted with blacks from Africa.
I think we can see here, for RTP teachers on the one hand and for Columbus and his followers on the other, some congruence between stated aims and actual results, and some evidence that the stated aims refer to actually controlled variables, and that disturbances to the values of those variables are resisted. And I think that we can see here some contrast between the aims that are controlled by the RTP teachers vs. those controlled by the Conquistadores.
I don't care about finding a better way for Columbus and his folks to feel blameless. Good luck to them.
We might be able to contribute to finding a way for teachers to teach responsible thinking. Rather, since the complaints are really about use of the "choice" language in the textbook teaching teachers about RTP, and no one is sure that teachers actually do use this phrase in the classroom, we might suggest a better way to convey to teachers how to go about teaching responsible thinking in an RTP setting. Specifically how to respond to disruptions and how to use the RTC as a resource.
The proposal that Rick called "Rick's Teaching Program" does not address this. In that proposal, the teacher does nothing more than gently but firmly (and coercively) remove a disrupting student from the classroom to the RTC so that the teacher can go on teaching without disruption.
The "I see you have chosen" phrase is inconsistent with the aim of teaching social responsibility because it is dishonest in the way that Columbus's "Requirement" is dishonest.
As I understand it, the aim of the "I see you have chosen" phrase is for the student to take responsibility for being presently unable to learn what the teacher is teaching in the classroom, to take responsibility for figuring out a how to do that, and to go off to the RTC for that purpose.
There is an agreed rule about disruption during teaching, the kid has been reminded of it and has agreed that she remembers and agrees to it, but has disrupted teaching again. What can the teacher say and do at that particular juncture to control for the above aims without dishonesty?
One approach would be to observe what teachers actually do say and do, and to draw recommendations from those observations, and put those recommendations in place of the "I see you have chosen" phrase in the teacher-teaching materials. But imaginative PCT researchers might be able to come up with recommendations without that.
Bruce Nevin
···
At 09:41 04/08/2001 -0800, Rick Marken wrote: