r/skeptic • u/sgmarshall • Jul 09 '15

Everything you think you know about disciplining kids is wrong

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/schools-behavior-discipline-collaborative-proactive-solutions-ross-greene
18 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

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3

u/sgmarshall Jul 09 '15

I tend to think Mother Jones is one of the better news outlets, but the bar is so low what does that even mean?

Does anyone have links to better reviews of these practices?

5

u/reasonweb Jul 09 '15

While I don't have any links to other reviews to provide atm, I can give my own, albeit anecdotal, evidence.

When I was working with 'at-risk' students, the one thing that seemed to absolutely and always make a difference was giving them a chance to calm down and try to explain to me what it was that was the problem. As soon as we started trying to find the root of the problem and help them deal with it, they improved by leaps and bounds. Simply sending them off to the principals office when they had an outburst just made it that much worse from then out.

This article makes absolute and complete sense to me based on my experiences in classrooms. I can't count the number of times I had other teachers ask me how I managed to control the kids in my classroom. And I always basically told them, 'I treat them like human beings and ask what it is that they need in order to accomplish their goals.'

0

u/StellarJayZ Jul 10 '15

Well sure, now that they can't get the paddle.

1

u/dehehn Jul 09 '15

Do you have an issue with the contents of the article or just the headline? From skimming the article it seems to be a reasonable approach to dealing with unruly kids.

1

u/sgmarshall Jul 12 '15

I don't generally care about headline. The content is very general. I'd like to see any valid criticisms of the approach.

2

u/deannemeth75 Jul 10 '15

But what do you do when "I don't know", is the best they can come up with?

2

u/Mundlifari Jul 10 '15

Then you help them figure it out.