[From Bill Powers (980429.1751 MDT)]
Tim Carey (980430.0645)--
]
[From Bill Powers (980429.0206 MDT)]
Those are the options YOU want them to have. Actually, their options are
the full range of possible actions, including attacking the teacher,
vandalizing the room, going to the RTC, leaving the school to play
outside,
and so on. Since they are in control of their own behavior, they can do
anything that is physically possible. If the child does not choose to go
to
the RTC, the only way you can get him or her to go there is through the
use
of superior physical force.
Again, Bill once they choose to walk through the front gate their options
are limited. Just like if I choose to contribute to CSG my options about
what I can discuss are limited. When I get married I have different options
from when I was single. If I go to a Chinese restaurant I have different
options than if I went to an Italian restaurant.
The children do not choose to walk through the front gate. They are forced
to do that; anyone who refuses to go to school calls down all the
compulsory forces of law enforcement, not to mention the parents' wrath.
They are not freely making an agreement to go to school. This isn't evident
in the case of children who like school and want to attend. The lack of
freedom shows up only when some child tries to refuse to go to school.
Their options are limited by the intentions of the adults involved. The
adults are responsible for limiting the options, and for using whatever
means they use to assure that the children can't choose the forbidden options.
You could argue that if a child doesn't choose to walk through the front
gate then we coercively force him to school.
Yes.
This isn't my experience in RTP schools. In RTP schools, if a kid is
truanting >for more than a day, an
intervention team gets together to look at what the kid might be
controlling for and how school personnel can help support the kid so that
they might start succeeding at school.
Does an intervention team ever conclude that the child's desire not to be
in school should be honored? Does the child actually have any say at all
with respect to returning?
Again, the only way to get an uncooperative kid to go to the RTC, or
home,
or anywhere else is to grab and drag him or her. And that is what you do,
or somebody does, isn't it? You either apply physical force, or threaten
to do so. If the child is given the option of walking or being dragged,
that's not much of a choice.
Generally, if a kid refuses to leave the administrator, then the parents,
and then the police I guess would be called. Bill, it's difficult to
explain what happens in an RTP school if your experience is only on
traditional schooling. In RTP schools kids don't mind going to the RTC
because they know they won't be in trouble and they are going to get help.
You're talking about "RTP kids," but if all the kids were RTP kids, why
would you ever need RTP? What tests the program and shows its underlying
structure is what happens to the hard cases.
I'm just talking about the nature of the build-in machinery on which RTP
depends. Whether it's used a lot or only a little is a different question.
Kids who don't mind going to the RTC are no test of how RTP works. It's the
ones who refuse to play along with the program who reveal the hidden works
of the system, the iron fist beneath the velvet glove.
In my experience, people like to stick at things they're successful at. If
kids are experiencing success at school, they seem happy to be there, and
happy to go along with the rules. Are these kids still operating in a
coercive school system? The focus of RTP is to help the kids succeed.
The only way to see if they're operating within a coercive school system is
to see what happens when some individuals rock the boat by not playing the
game by the rules of RTP. You say to the child, "OK, you did it again, so I
guess you're choosing to go to the RTC." The child says "The hell I am, I'm
staying right here, butthead." What happens then? In a non-coercive school,
the teachers would say "All right, then, stay in the class, we can't force
you to leave." And the administrators would agree. You know and I know that
RTP wouldn't work if the teachers let the disruptors stay in the class. So
it is _necessary_ to coerce this kid and get him out of the class even
against his will. Even arguing with him is a mistake -- while the argument
is going on, the class is stalled, and the whole point of RTP is NOT to
stall the class any longer than needed to remove the disruption. The RTP
teacher, to save the program, must be prepared to do whatever is required
to get the second-offender out of the classroom as quickly and surely as
possible. WHATEVER is required, including the use of physical force.
Perhaps our experience of schooling from Australia to the U.S. is getting
in the way here. I don't know of any schools for example where security
guards are employed.
It's a rare high school in the US that does NOT employ security guards,
often armed. Many city schools also have metal-detectors at the entrances
to try to keep weapons out of the schools. There are often undercover
police in the school trying to stop the drug traffic.
How is the threat of force communicated to kids or do
you just assume that everyone knows they will be forced?
It's communicated by demonstrating it. For example, suppose a child is sent
to a detention room as a punishment. If the child refuses to go, a
uniformed guard with a gun or at least a baton escorts the child to the
detention room. If the child still resists, the guard forces the student to
leave the building, or if more force is required, calls the police to evict
or arrest the student. Students are always seeing force being applied or
openly threatened, at least in big-city schools. You see the same thing in
affluent suburbs of the big cities, although not so open.
I agree, that the
kid's options include anything the kid can think of doing, for many kids
all they can think of is following the rules. Is school coercive for these
kids?
Yes. The coercion will show up the instant one of these kids does something
against the basic rules. It's like the traffic laws. As long as you stop
for red lights and stop signs, you see no coercion at all. But just once
try running a red light with a policeman watching, and you will quickly
realize that you're being monitored all the time, and you have no choice
about red lights and stop signs -- and never did have a choice.
This hasn't happened in the RTP schools that I've been involved with. I've
described the approach with the intervention team above. The attitude of
the staff is one of invitation. Also, in Australia, parents are able to
shift their kids between schools if they aren't satisfied with what's going
on in one school.
This is all to the good, and works in the direction against coercion.
That's the direction I think we should try to go. But as things stand now,
it would be less than honest to claim that there is no reliance on
coercion. No civilization has
EVER figured out how to do without coercion. You don't have to like it to
admit that you sometimes use coercion for the simple reason that you can't
think of anything else that would work.
So if we ask a kid to leave and they do, have they then made the choice? If
they leave their seat and walk on their own, unescorted to the RTC, I guess
from your definition above we can assume they've made a free choice since
they know they have other options.
On the contrary, the rules of RTP are set up so they must know they have no
other realistic options. The child _always_ goes to the RTC, willingly or
not, after the second disruption. There are no other options to pick from,
because refusing to go will simply result in force being used to make you
go. When the threat of force lurks in the background, there is no freedom.
Either you "freely" choose to do the right thing, or you will be forced to
do the right thing. Either way, you will end up doing what someone else
considers to be the right thing.
Of course. If a child likes school or sees the need for education later
in life, there's no problem. RTP has no problem with children who willingly
go along with the program.
So is it accurate to say, then, that RTP for these kids is operating in the
framework of a coercive school system? Do these kids experience school
coercively?
Yes, dammit. The coercive machinery is built into the laws that say you
either go to school willingly or you go unwillingly. Either way, you go. If
you break a rule the second time, you go to the RTC willingly, or you go
unwillingly. Either way, you go. If you disrupt the RTC a second time, you
leave the school. Willingly or unwillingly, you have no choice: you leave.
Physical force is used, if required, to assure that you go, and if required
there is no hestitation to use it, especially when the police get involved.
Do you mean that children would all voluntarily go to school if they had
the choice of doing anything that they want to do? Some children would,
to be sure, but many wouldn't. The ones who don't want to be in school are
kept there anyway, against their wills.
Sounds again like lots of kids have lots of different experiences of
school, some have references of coercive schools and some don't.
What you're not understanding here is the idea that coercion is built into
the school system even when it's not being used, and a child lives in a
coercive system if the machinery for applying force exists, even if the
child has never experienced it. In a NON-coercive system, a child's refusal
to go along would be the last word; force would never be used and would not
even be an option. If force is forbidden, all the arguing and persuasion in
the world can't force anyone to do anything that is not chosen by that
person. The child could hear out the intervenors, and say "I hear what
you're saying, and I'm still not going back to school." And that would be
that. There would be NO WAY to get that child back in school.
It seems that PCT has gone out the window momentarily. How do you know that
controlling someone's behaviour is _necessarily_ coercive?
Coercion goes beyond controlling behavior. In its purest form it consists
of _ignoring_ the other person's control systems, and applying whatever
physical force is required to make that person go through the desired
motions, stay in one place, be silent, or whatever is wanted. The other
person's will is simply overridden, if it is even considered. The screaming
kid is seized by one arm and dragged out of the room by someone so much
larger and stronger that, as the Borg say, resistance is futile. That is
what it is like to be coerced: nothing you try to do can make the slightest
difference to the outcome.
Where does coercion reside for it to exist at all? Does it need to be the
intent of the coercer _and_ also the understanding of the coercee?
It doesn't depend on either. When the coercer's actions simply nullify the
coercee's control systems, coercion is happening, even if unintended. That
how I think of coercion, anyway.
If the
person doing the controlling has something like "safety" as their intent,
is it still coercion?
Well, consider the mother who rushes out into the street and snatches her
toddler out of the traffic. I'd call that coercion. The mother isn't
considering at all where the child wants to be, and where the child ends up
is totally due to the mother's actions. So the child's control systems have
been, for the moment, completely overridden by the mother's action. The
mother's intention is the safety of the child, and the child's intentions
are irrelevant.
That's because you are a good law-abiding citizen who would pay taxes
even if there were no penalties for not paying them, who went willingly to
school as a child, who obeyed every adult command, who never drives over
the speed limit, and in general voluntarily does everything that those in
power dictate should be done. Right?
Right. And that's my point. Does this mean that I have really been coerced
and I just don't realise it?
No, you haven't been coerced, because you never caused any error in the
"coercion system," whatever or whoever it was. But you were living in a
coercive system, and if you had ever broken those rules, it would have made
itself known to you. If you were NOT living in a coercive system, you might
break one of those laws, acidentally or on purpose, and nothing at all
would happen to you, nor would you expect anything to happen to you.
Actually, things like traffic laws are only mildly coercive, because the
punishments are so limited that you might actually choose to break the law
and pay the penalty in order to achieve some more important goal. If a
friend is having a heart attack, you will take him to the hospital and help
him inside even if you have no change for the parking meter. Real coercion
would either impose a penalty so severe that you couldn't affort to suffer
it (like death), or would simply swoop down on you, snatch you away, and
throw you in jail without paying any attention to your protests or
explanations.
You support the idea that children
ought to get an education and spend 6 hours a weekday in school, so it
never occurs to you that for some children, being in school seems like
being in jail.
Bill, I'm more than aware that for some kids being in school is like being
in jail. From the kids I've worked with this has to do with the fact that
they are failing miserably in school in all sorts of ways (e.g.,
academically and socially). I've never worked with kids who were succeeding
at school (in whatever that meant to them) and also didn't want to be
there. It is constantly amazing to me that kids who are failing would still
want to be in school.
The idea of just letting them run free and do whatever they
please would strike you, I'm sure, as ridiculous.
I don't see the situation as dichotomously as you do. I don't think the
only alternative to not wanting to go to school is to run free and do
whatever they please.
Neither do I. I was just trying to get you to admit that your intention for
the child to be back in school is considered more important than the
child's intention to not be in school. And I would agree with this.
... in the schools that use RTP well, teachers don't
remind, or persuade, or coax or nag or convince or do any of those things
to get the kids to stay in class. If they don't control for staying in
class, they leave. If they're out for any length of time an intervention
team gets together to look at what's going on for them and how we can help
them succeed.
That sounds absolutely ideal. Can they really leave the school building
altogether and not come back? If so, that is very brave of the people
running the program; they're really putting their principles on the line.
This, of course, is a long step toward really doing away with coercion.
What's the situation ... do perceptions still count, or are we talking
about some objective situation?
This is a hard one to discuss in a simple way. Saying that it's all
perception doesn't mean that you can perceive the world any way you please.
Well, you _can_, but it't not likely to work. You can decide to perceive a
bicycle as if it had four wheels, but if you just get off it and let go, it
will not stand there the way a four-wheeled vehicle would: it will fall
over. Our perceptions reflect the properties of the real world, although
not one-to-one. Yes, the world we experience is a perceptual world, but no,
you aren't free to perceive this world any way that strikes your fancy, not
if you want to predict it or control it.
but admitting that application of physical force is always
one of the options you have, and that you threaten to use or actually use
it when necessary.
Sure, if a kid is threatening the safety of himself or others he will not
be permitted to do that and physical force will be used to prevent that
from happening. How does this situation translate into the reference of
"coercive school system" for every living control system that spends time
in a school environment.
I've tried to explain this above. It's a coercive system if it contains
mechanisms that use force whenever someone behaves in forbidden ways, or
fails to behave in a way that is required. Keep thinking of the contrast
with a non-coercive system -- one that permits students to do anything they
want to, like breaking windows, hitting other students, or refusing to go
to the RTC.
Calling it something else, or saying that the kid is
actually doing it to himself or herself, is not honest.
Calling it physical force is an observation, calling it coercion is an
interpretation (unless you've done the Test to find out what they're
controlling for)
I'd say that calling it physical force is just a description. If I twist
your arm behind you and force you to march out of the room, or drag you, or
pick you up and carry you, I'd say that is physical force being used. And
my definition of coercion doesn't leave much room for interpretation, does it?
If you're
responsible for applying the force or the threat of force, you're doing
it,
not the kid.
So does this mean coercion exists (at that moment) in my head? Does it also
exist in the kids head?
No, it means that my hands are on the kid's wrists and my muscles are
applying enough force to move the kid out of the room no matter how hard he
resists. The kid is not forcing the kid to leave the room; I'm the one
doing the forcing. Therefore I am doing the coercing and I am responsible
for doing it. Yes, these are all perceptions, but we will get excellent
agreement among independent observers on these perceptions.
-- he _made_ me hit him by stealing my book." You're saying "I didn't
coerce the kid. By breaking the rules, he _made_ me call security to
force him to leave the room."
Wouldn't I have to do the Test to know what I was doing to the kid. What if
the kid was controlling for seeing who was strongest, am I still coercing
him? What if the kid is actually controlling for going home on that
particular day?
You don't need to do the Test on yourself. You know what your intentions
are. If you intend to overwhelm the kid's control systems, you may not call
what you're doing coercing, but most people would. And I define coercion so
that by definition you would be coercing the kid. The kid may think it's a
contest, but as you're an adult with comparatively immense resources, the
kid can't win. Whether the kid wants to go home or anywhere else is
irrelevant; he's going home regardless of what he wants. He will find that
out as soon as he decides he wants to go somewhere else beside home. He
will still end up at home.
Come on, Tim. It's RTP all the way, or not at all.
I couldn't agree more ... is it still "it's all perception" all the way or
not at all?
Yes, it's all perception, but the world we perceive contains regularities
that we don't put there. They are signs that a real world exists beyond our
perceptions.
Best,
Bill P.