More Compromises

by James Burns | Oct 10, 2011 | Bully Proof Classroom, Parents, Teachers

Illustration Five

Obedience Has Become a Dirty word

I first started talking about obedience about fifteen years ago. It was one of the three things that I believed needed to be developed in all children. The other two very important characteristics that I thought needed to be developed in children were respect and responsibility. When I used to speak to parents, I would see a light bulb go off in their heads as they discovered this missing piece for disciplining their kids.

When I spoke with teachers about what their biggest difficulty in the classroom was, they always said it was discipline. If they were not able to maintain discipline in their classrooms, then they couldn’t teach. I explained that they needed to demand obedience from their students. Would you believe that the teachers in the audience looked at me like I had two heads? One teacher said to me, “You train dogs to be obedient, not children.” Things got so tough for me when I spoke to teachers that I had to change my choice of words and use the word compliance rather than obedience. For some reason, no one seemed to mind the word compliance, even though it’s synonymous with obedience. Everyone in the audience nodded their heads in agreement when I referred to the three things that had to be developed in all children: respect, responsibility, and compliance.

I can’t understand why obedience has become such a dirty word. When I was growing up, parents and teachers demanded obedience. We were told what to do, and we had darn well better do what we were told, or it was curtains. Today, obedience from children is something we rarely demand, and it is definitely the last thing we get. Yet, parents and teachers complain constantly that their children are disrespectful, but they say their children “just don’t listen.” To me, it’s interesting that teachers and parents rarely describe the behavior using the word disobedient. In fact, I think it’s ridiculous that we are reduced to having to use euphemisms instead of the real thing.

Most parents rarely tell their children what to do. Instead, they usually ask them. They might ask a five year old, “What do you want to wear to school?” or “What do you want for dinner tonight?” Occasionally parents tell their children what to do, and when their kids don’t do it, they ask their kids, “What do you want to do?” Does it really matter what a four-year-old kid wants to do? Society sees adults telling children what to do as some form of disrespect. The way it should work is that children earn the right to make some choices after they have been obedient. But if obedience isn’t developed first in a child, the result is that those children will ultimately become disrespectful and hard to handle.

In our society, parents and teachers seem to want to level the ground where everyone gets treated the same way, adults and children. No pecking order, no one in charge, everyone has rights. Rights to do what? Rights to say what you want and do what you want without any consequence? Society decided that it was politically incorrect to seek obedience from kids. Society has preached raising tolerance for behaviors that forty years ago would have been punished. The result? We have lower expectations in behavior for children and a greater tolerance for undesirable behavior, and that has translated into poorer performance in terms of behavior and performance in general.

 Illustration Six

Everyone Has Plenty of Reasons for Their Behavior – BUT THERE ARE NO EXCUSES

I have always enjoyed watching Court TV because I love listening to the defense arguments. I enjoy listening to how the attorney for the defense can come up with all kinds of excuses to explain why the person on trial committed the crime. The defendant could even have confessed to the crime, and the defense attorney will still find some circumstance that caused the person to commit the crime, in essence to excuse the crime. Once, there was a fifteen-year-old kid named Christian Pittman on trial for killing his grandparents two years earlier. This young man shot his grandparents in their sleep at close range with a shotgun, put the leash on the dog, walked out of the trailer that they lived in, doused the trailer with gasoline, lit the trailer on fire, and got in a pick-up truck and drove away. The trial went on for weeks, and I watched most of it. The defense attorney was running out of ammunition so he decided to play a card that is becoming a very common excuse for deviant behavior. The defense attorney contended that the reason this boy committed this heinous crime was because he had an adverse reaction to Zoloft, an anti-depressant drug that he was taking at the time. I sat on the edge of my seat as I waited for the verdict. I was thinking that if a person can be found innocent for murder because of a medication issue, anyone can get away with anything.

I am amazed how family, environment, genetics, and medication can be used as an excuse for behavior these days. Once these factors are considered the cause of deviant behavior, the person who committed the crime or behaved inappropriately will not be held responsible. It follows then that they should be excused for these behaviors, in other words, not be held accountable. Ultimately, people should be held accountable for their actions, and consequences must be imposed. Consequences are the only thing that will stop negative or deviant behaviors such as talking back, not completing homework, bullying, lying, speeding, sexual harassment on the job, stealing, rape, murder, etc.

Today, we have reached the point where as soon as parents have trouble managing their child’s behavior or the school makes them aware their child is acting inappropriately in school, parents are ready to conclude that these behaviors are caused by ADHD or a teacher with unrealistic expectations or another child. Parents rarely think of holding themselves responsible, of asking themselves, Where am I going wrong here and what do I need to change? Or, I need to hold my child responsible, so what consequences will I impose? It’s so much easier to blame the school, a teacher, an administrator, a guidance counselor, another student, or a medical condition. In schools, teachers blame students’ poor behavior or poor academic performance on a child’s difficult circumstances at home or that the child’s parents will not put the child on medication. In society, if a person commits a crime that is punishable, the defense attorney will try to convince a jury that the person is mentally ill or comes from a pitiful family background and should not be held responsible.

As a school administrator, I have observed deviant behavior and have done my best to hold students accountable. I didn’t just look at the students’ isolated behavior at the time, but considered what would happen if the behavior continued, and how it would affect the students’ chances for success as an adult. I was working as a principal of a school for clinically disturbed students in 1993, and most of the students were depressed, psychotic, and on medication. When I took over the school there was no system of accountability, so I instituted an In-School Suspension program that was used as a means of keeping students in the school for offenses that they would otherwise be suspended for. One morning, a student came into school late and proceeded to kick out a window, punch a teacher, tear down hallway decorations and bulletin boards, and was screaming so loud he could be heard in the next county. He was brought into my office, and I said to him, “Nick [name change] I don’t know what I am going to do with you, but for now take a seat in In-School Suspension.”

About five minutes later his school therapist walked into my office. She was furious. She said, “You have Nick in In-School Suspension?”

I said, “Yes, have you taken a look what he did to my building?”

“Did you know that Nick didn’t have any breakfast this morning?”

“I haven’t had any coffee yet, but I’m still talking to you.” I then asked her to leave the office. Did it really matter that Nick didn’t have breakfast? Of course not! What really mattered was that if Nick was not disciplined for his inappropriate behaviors, he would definitely repeat the behavior again.

I thought about what I was going to do with this student. I knew that I would suspend him, but I also knew that I had to begin to work on developing a relationship with Nick so that he wouldn’t react this way again. About 10:30 a.m., I walked down to In-School Suspension and brought Nick a bagel and orange juice. I told Nick that he should have breakfast before he comes to school, but if he didn’t, he should come into my office and I would get him something to eat. Nick was also suspended for ten days, police charges were filed, and he had to write a letter of apology. Had there been a reason for his unreasonable behavior? He had a reason, but having a reason wasn’t an excuse for what he did. If I had bought in to excusing his behavior because he was hungry, Nick would have gotten away with what he did. But I didn’t, I imposed a consequence. Nick’s behavior changed that year. He tried to raise the bar with his angry and violent behavior; I decided to raise the bar with my consequences. It not only worked for him but the school took a real turn for the better with the student body realizing that this type of behavior would not be accepted.

There are plenty of reasons for people’s behaviors, but those reasons are not excuses. What I showed Nick was that there were rules and regulations that had to be followed, but I also showed him some compassion and understanding. I imposed the consequence, but still made sure he had something to eat. I believe that this is the missing piece in dealing with deviant behavior. We are too compassionate and understanding, and we lose sight that everyone must follow the rules of a family, a school, a job, and society. If we continue to allow everything under the sun to be excused and decide that consequences are for the birds, then we can expect our problems with inappropriate behavior in school and deviant behavior in society to continue to get worse.

 Illustration Seven

Can You Handle The Truth?

One of the things that I’ve noticed is that everyone has a problem with the truth. I don’t mean we walk around lying all the time, but we are always afraid of hurting someone’s feelings or becoming entangled in some sort of confrontation with the person we are speaking with or even the person we’re living with. Sometimes we are concerned about someone’s reaction, so we bend the truth or poke around trying to figure out what that person wants to hear. It really starts to become a problem in personal relationships when couples are afraid to make their desires known for fear of a break-up or a divorce. People can have a problem with the truth on the job, when a supervisor might worry about an employee’s reaction to a poor performance evaluation. In education, a teacher might be worried about a student’s or parent’s reaction, then could easily award grades that are not in line with the student’s performance.

When I was in high school my guidance counselor called me down to his office and pulled out my grades. He said, “What do you want to do when you’re through with high school?” I told him that I didn’t know, and then in the next breath, thinking that I had to tell him something other than the truth, that I wanted to be a bartender, I told him that I wanted to be a lawyer. “A lawyer,” he said, pointing to my grades. “These are not lawyer’s grades. If I were you, I would start to think about doing something else.” I walked out of his office and wasn’t the least bit offended. I didn’t even think about going home and telling my father that my guidance counselor said I wasn’t smart enough to be a lawyer. I never said one word to my father. You know what? The guy had actually told me the truth, and the truth really did set me free. I started to look honestly at my abilities, and I was able to acknowledge that I hadn’t worked hard academically for my first three years of high school. I started to think about my future realistically. My guidance counselor made me take a hard look in the mirror and come to terms with what my abilities and my attitude really were. He told me the truth, and I appreciated that.

Well, in 1977, my father sold the bar, and I became a teacher that same year. I really enjoyed teaching. I was a special educator so I didn’t always have the cream of the crop when it came to my students. In fact, my students were usually had the worst behavior problems in the school and could really get to me on some days. But, overall, I developed relationships with the kids, and things seemed to usually go pretty well. As I progressed in my career, I noticed things were changing. I was expected to put up with more and more behavior problems, and everyone was giving me some excuse for a kid’s deviance. The catch phrase that seemed to be in vogue about twenty years ago was, “I really like this kid, but I don’t like his behavior.” Was this the truth? I don’t think so. Is it possible to like someone and not like their behavior? The truth is, we don’t like the person because of his behavior, and people need to be made aware of this in a considerate way. A person is his behavior, and the two can’t be separated. I can give you the names of people who are well known in society for absolute deviance, and you tell me if you like them, but not their behavior: Charles Manson, Scott Peterson, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Adolph Hitler. Can anyone not like their behavior but still like them as people? No, we don’t like them period. The perception we have of a person is based on his behavior. If the behavior is not likeable, we probably will dislike the person. People need to know that if their behavior doesn’t change, then others won’t want to develop meaningful relationships with them, and ultimately won’t like them.

Recently, a student came into my office (I was working as an interim principal) and discussed with me what he wanted to do after he finished high school He wanted to be a doctor, which is a terrific goal for a young person. Well, I asked him what he scored on his SATs. He told me he scored about a 400 on each section. I was thinking in my mind that a perfect score is 800 on each section, and a decent score would be about a 650 to 700. I knew something right then: he wasn’t going to be my doctor. I proceeded to pull his grades out and found that his math and science grades were C’s and D’s. I wanted to respond with the same question that my guidance counselor asked me. Do these look like a doctor’s grades? But, based upon the culture and society’s norms, I couldn’t ask that question. I immediately directed this student to the entry requirements that colleges have for their pre-med program, and ultimately medical school. He discovered the truth on his own, came back to me, and thanked me for helping him realize that his study skills needed improvement and that he needed to take and re-take the college boards. The truth made him aware of his own weaknesses and how much harder he was going to have to work in order to achieve his goals.

Society seems to want to withhold the truth and make everyone believe that they are smarter than what they are and that their behavior is based upon circumstance, their environment, or lack of therapy or medication. Facing the truth about my abilities and my work ethic put me on track, helped me choose a good vocation, and helped me to understand how I needed to improve my work ethic. Subsequently, instead of floating through life unsuccessfully from one job to another, I worked hard in college, graduate school, then as an employee. So the next time your kids come home and say that their teacher told them that they have to work harder, that their work or behavior is unacceptable, or they better consider going to a community college rather than Dartmouth, thank that teacher for doing something that is a rarity today: speaking the truth. It really doesn’t matter how we get to the truth as long as we get there. My guidance counselor was straight forward 35 years ago. I knew that by today’s standards that my journey getting to the truth would have to be done with a little more sensitivity, it still worked and the desired result was achieved.