This blog comments on business, education, philosophy, psychology, and economics, among other topics, based on my understanding of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Ludwig von Mises’ economics, and Edith Packer's psychology. Epistemology and psychology are my special interests. Note that I assume ethical egoism and laissez-faire capitalism are morally and economically unassailable. My interest is in applying, not defending, them.
Independent judgment is both a personality trait, a distinctive way of thinking and acting, and a character trait, a moral conviction in the face of opposition or indifference to stand by one’s beliefs and values. A number of writers in their own nuanced ways have captured the gist of these traits.
The late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, offers in his Stanford Commencement Address of 2005 (1, 2) an eloquent statement of independence:
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Follow your own thoughts and emotions, Jobs is saying. Don’t give in to the edicts and requests of others.
Psychiatrist William Glasser in Positive Addiction (p. 3) ties independence to happiness:
As we grow, we should learn to judge for ourselves what is worthwhile, but it takes a great deal of strength to do what is right when few people will agree with us for doing it. Most of us spend our lives in a series of compromises between doing what we believe in and doing what will please those who are important to us. Happiness depends a great deal on gaining enough strength to live with a minimum of these compromises.
It is these compromises to please others, Glasser says, that create unhappy relationships and lead us to seek compensating behaviors, such as anxiety and depression, or worse. Strength to say “yes” to ourselves and “no” to possibly too-demanding and probing others is the path to happiness.
Dependence, not independence, is the quality most suitable to authoritarian states. . . . The hallmark of the independent man is the ability to bear responsibility. To be responsible and accountable for one’s actions. To do, and to stand up for what one has done. Not to hide behind “superior orders,” not to seek shelter in group decisions, and to take strength from some heroic figure—but to be one’s own man.
The self-reliant and self-responsible individual, Greenberg is saying, does not unquestioningly take orders from authority. The citizen of a free society exhibits a healthy distrust of anyone in power.
Ayn Rand, by way of Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged (p. 1019), places the source of independent judgment in one’s own mind:
Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life . . .
No one, in other words, can get inside our heads to make us do our own thinking or, for that matter, make us not think. Perception, judgment, decision making, and action all originate within our minds. Control of our lives, then, is internal. Letting others “pinch hit” for us is to allow them to do our thinking.
What encourages us to become independent? How can our children develop it? Perhaps Summerhill School founder, A. S. Neill, states the conditions best (Summerhill, p. 9):
Free children are not easily influenced; the absence of fear accounts for this phenomenon. Indeed, the absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen to a child.
By “free child,” Neill means one whose rights as an individual are respected by other children and adults in both home and school, and one who respects the rights of other children and adults in both home and school. Otherwise, the child is free to do whatever he or she desires, that is, is free of authoritarian edicts and bossing and bullying by others. Not surprisingly, Neill also ties independence to the free society as an essential requirement.
Independence and happiness require freedom because freedom produces independence. And independence makes happiness possible.
The impetus for this post is once again my daughter’s softball. She is currently playing in what is called “travel,” as opposed to “recreational,” ball and the seemingly endless string of practices and games almost every weekend tempt me to recite the title of this post to other parents. Not that I want to take anything away from my daughter’s talent and desire to excel in a fun sport, nor the same of the other parents’ daughters, but a sense of perspective may be in order, especially considering the low odds of winning an athletic scholarship to college, the risks of injury (1, 2, 3) and burnout before even getting to that point, and the studies that now show multiple sports experiences and deliberate (unorganized) play develop better perception and decision making than the single, year-round specialization many young athletes today endure. Sports, of course, are not the only activity of youth in which a nearly 24/7 pressure-cooker atmosphere exists. Music, dance, and drama teachers, and the children’s parents, not to mention the academic teachers, can also lay it on thick; the term “stage mom” (1, 2) that comes to us from the theatre keeps coming to mind.
Part of the obsession many coaches, teachers, and parents have about sports, or the arts and academics, stems from a misunderstanding of the differences between the less accomplished and the more accomplished, or between “amateur” and “professional.” By “professional” here I mean only a greater degree of skill and dedication, not “paid professional,” though the young persons may be aiming for professional careers in sports or the arts or science and the coaches and teachers may be grooming them for that goal. In softball the difference is between “recreational” and “travel” ball and in the arts it may be the difference between performing in the local community and attending a select arts high school. The assumed differences between these two levels, as stated by one youth baseball organization, include the possibility of failure and rejection in travel ball, but not in recreational; the alleged life lesson to sacrifice leisure to hard work so success will follow; and the supposed lack of need for instruction at this “nearly professional” level. There are kernels of truth in all three of these differences, but these kernels get distorted when coaches, teachers, and parents lose perspective, forgetting about the whole of life.
Take the difference about the possibility of failure. Even at a lower level of skill, such as in a marching band or softball, not everyone participates one-hundred percent of the time. Only some band members may perform in the pep band at basketball games and even fewer in the swing band. Soloists at the spring concert may be fewer than a handful. The same is true for softball; not everyone can be pitcher. More important, not achieving an initial goal need not be viewed as failure. A clarinetist, for example, who transfers from a small-town marching band to an arts high school orchestra may not earn one of the top four positions in the orchestra. This eye-opening awareness of the greater skill of others should be experienced as motivator, not a threat to success or happiness. There is no more important attitude to cultivate than seeing others’ achievements as an inspiration.
To say that youth should sacrifice leisure to hard work so success will follow is misleading, especially if it is presented as “we expect you to give up your vacation” for the sake of softball, or music, etc. Paid professionals do not do this, except on occasion, mainly because they know their schedules well in advance. The problem with youth sports is that communication, advance or otherwise, is often lacking, leading to surprises in the schedule. Hard work, yes; and all children who enjoy an activity, whether it be sports, the arts, or a business or science club will, if not hampered by authoritarian adults, devote long hours of concentrated attention to improving their knowledge and skill. This concentrated attention is sometimes, unfortunately, interpreted by adults as “sacrifice” in the sense of giving up a higher value for the sake of a lower one. “Dedication” and “self-motivation” would be better descriptors.
The notion that higher levels of skill do not need instruction stems from the term “director,” such as the director of a play or conductor of an orchestra. Some coaches claim the same prerogative for their advanced teams. But direction means guiding the skills of others to produce the effect the director envisions. That in itself is teaching, and all directors, including conductors and coaches, provide a variety of instructions to their performers to accomplish what they want. That coaches at the highest level of professional sports are teachers became obvious during the 1987 National Football League strike when secondary players were hired as substitutes to play games while the stars were walking picket lines. Much commentary was made about the expert teaching abilities of various coaches. When a coach, or conductor or director, says that he or she assumes a certain skill level and is not there to teach, I would beware that blind obedience is what is wanted, as in “I expect you to have the discipline to do what I say.” “Discipline,” however, means acting in accordance with one’s own self-imposed guidelines. It is the mark of an advanced skill. Even at an advanced level, coaches, teachers, and conductors should aim to help turn caterpillars into butterflies.
Total commitment at the expense of everything else—spending every weekend and a few week nights on one’s sport or art, because “that’s the way we do it here” or because “that’s the only way to get a scholarship”—is obsession of the stage parent type. When the commitment does not originate in the child, injury or burnout or even parental estrangement can result. Perspective on why an activity is being pursued needs always to be kept in the forefront of parents’ minds.
The title of this post comes from psychiatrist and attention-deficit/hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD) critic Peter Breggin. It’s a variation of Maria Montessori’s line to “control the environment, not the child.” For Montessori, children develop healthy psychologies—become “normalized,” to use her term—by being left free to pursue their own interests and choose their own educational work, provided the surroundings of the classroom are made safe and stimulating. Drugs are a cruel and totally unwarranted control of the child.
Most children who exhibit the well-known ADHD symptoms are simply failing to handle the boredom, confusion*, or authoritarianism, or all three, of school, home, and other environments in which they live and play. They are not diseased kids, possessing neurological or biochemical imbalances, who require addicting, cocaine-like stimulants to cow them into submission. They are youngsters trying to learn, and have fun in the process, but their world is complex and often the opposite of fun, especially school. What they desperately need is to be left free as much as possible to pursue their own interests and, when they request it, one or several adults to be their friends, to pay attention to them, to listen to their pleasures and worries, and to be their coach and confidant. What they most decidedly do not need are William Glasser’s seven deadly habits (p. 13): criticizing, blaming, complaining, nagging, threatening, punishing, and bribing. All of these habits, of course, are staples of their world—and ours, but many children do not know how to cope with them. What they also most definitely do not need is to be made to feel stoned or spaced out.
Labeling children with ADHD stigmatizes them as inadequate and, as a result, induces unearned guilt, because the adults who recommend the drugs are actually blaming them for their behavior even though the theory behind the whole psychotropic drug mantra is materialism and determinism. A child who acts up in class, or who does not pay attention, according to the adults, must be controlled. Something, so the adults say, is wrong with the child, not with the adults’ methods of relating to the child. The message is clear. Donna Bryant Goertz says that medication today is the new spanking.
The evidence for a physiological basis of ADHD behavior does not exist. The experimental studies do not uphold the belief. This is especially confirmed when the ADHD researchers themselves admit that the children improve during summer vacation and when taught in smaller, more attention-focused classes. Indeed, when looking at the psychiatric professions’ nine symptoms of inattention and the nine symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity, I can say that I have often exhibited everyone of them—today, when I was a child, and in all the years in between. I also know too many highly successful people, and have heard of many others, who, if the medicines had been available when they were children, would have been drugged to the hilt and probably had their futures destroyed.
The criteria to look at concerning ADHD are Glasser’s (p. 256)**: if your child can watch and understand television, play video games, and use a computer, do better for some teachers than for others, do better in one subject than another that requires the same level of reading and understanding, and has good friends he or she enjoys being with, then it is highly unlikely that there is anything wrong with your child. Glasser (click educational, last clip on the page) piercingly and humorously puts the issue in perspective when he says that the worst attention deficit disorders in the world are husbands and wives, because many of them so often do not listen to each other!
As I have said in these pages before, the solution to helping so-called problem children is to let them go fish. “Many are just plain bored of sitting at a desk in a classroom and are sick of having adults lord their size and power over them.” Going fishing, though literally possible at the Sudbury Valley School, is metaphor for getting adults off their backs and more generally for removing confusion and authoritarianism from their lives.
*I say “confusion” because some parents today who have rejected the authoritarianism of their parents and grandparents have nevertheless failed to provide structure and consistency for their children. Similar behavior can result. Some schools can also provide this confusion.
**I’ve simplified these criteria. See pp. 255-59 in Choice Theory for a fuller understanding of Glasser’s analysis of the so-called learning disabilities. Glasser calls psychotropic medicines “brain drugs,” refusing to grant them the honorific “medicines,” and refers to their side effects as effects. There’s nothing secondary or “side,” he says, about the effects of brain drugs.
The fundamental method of science is observation, so nineteenth century naturalist Louis Agassiz (pp. 40-48) stressed its importance in teaching and learning. As he told one student, “Take this fish and look at it.” Hours later, when the student wanted to know what to do next, Agassiz replied, “Look at your fish.” And still later, “Look, look, look.” For three days the student looked at the fish, then on the fourth, Agassiz presented him with a new specimen. Observation means using our senses to perceive the world. Figuratively, it means opening our eyes and looking at it. The more one looks, Agassiz was encouraging his student, the more one sees.
In the human sciences, psychology in particular, observation is also the fundamental method of acquiring knowledge. It means not just looking at human behavior, but more importantly at the mental content of human beings. Introspection, as I have argued before, is a legitimate method of science, actually a form of observation. Looking at the premises people hold in their minds, that is, their beliefs, values, and emotions, is key to understanding why they act the way they do.
The word “premise” refers to a thought or proposition assumed to be true that supports a later conclusion. In the face of an apparent contradiction—such as, on the one hand, the attacks made on McDonald’s and Walmart as less than virtuous companies and, on the other, the amazing job creation of the former and wonderful, inexpensive products of the latter made available to the masses—Ayn Rand’s line to “check your premises” comes to mind. Look deep, as Rand would urge, at all conclusions that lead to other conclusions and go all the way down to the starting points of one’s beliefs, values, and emotions.
Thus, when critics of McDonald’s and Walmart are pressed for their reasoning, their response might be something like this. “McDonald’s and Walmart are just seeking profits; the profit motive and customer satisfaction, after all, are opposed to each other.” Why are profits bad? “Because profit seeking is selfish.” But eating and drinking are selfish; why is the pursuit of self-interest when it doesn’t hurt others bad? “People can’t be left free to pursue their own interests; the poor especially don’t know what’s good for them. They aren’t able to distinguish good food and good products from the bad. The government has to regulate business and guide the poor in their choices.” Don’t the poor have free will and the ability to reason out their own choices? “We’re all controlled by our environment and reason can only go so far; it’s limited.” How do you know? “We can’t really know anything with certainty. In fact, people who claim certain knowledge are dangerous, potential dictators. We have to talk things over and let the majority vote for the best alternatives.”
Although many additional lines of questioning of these critics could be pursued, this example demonstrates the many premises (in this case, false ones) underlying a simple concrete conclusion. The more one looks at the premises people hold, the more one sees and comes to understand.
The same process can be performed on personal psychology. Although nothing in psychology is simple, consider the relatively uncomplicated phenomenon of stage fright, such as the anxiety an actor feels before going on stage or a speaker before delivering a lecture. Premises behind the fear might range from the thought “I can’t do it, I don’t want to do it, I’m going to be a failure and be humiliated, I have to get out of it” to “I hope I don’t make too many mistakes, I know I can do a good job, I’ll just keep working on my craft to polish it, I know that once I’m out there I will begin to relax.” Or something in between. Deeper exploration might find connections to similar premises that operated in similar situations in one’s early, formative years and might also reveal how choices made then produced feelings of anxiety that still operate. Looking at these earlier premises provides fuller understanding of how personal psychology develops, the role of choice in that development, and the role of choice in making corrections in the present—in this case, taking a deep breath, walking on stage, and delivering one’s lines or lecture.
Looking at a mind or looking at a fish, the process is the same. Observation is the method of science and the more one looks, the more one sees. Indeed, a modern-day Agassiz working in the human sciences might say to his or her students, “Look at your psychology. Look. Look. Look.”
And, of course, this directive applies not just to students, but to all of us. If we unfailingly “look, look, look” into our souls, we might be surprised by what we see.
In my previous post I argued that hitting a child or dog is neither nice nor necessary. Positive motivation and the desire and willingness to develop a warm relationship are what generate influence to channel behavior in appropriate ways. The implication about hitting a child is that it transgresses legal boundaries.*
Indeed, spanking would seem to violate child abuse laws and some judges have concurred (1, 2, 3). Current law says that any marks or bruising left as the result of physical contact constitutes abuse (1, 2, 3). In most states, however, the law exempts “reasonable disciplining,” though precisely what that means is not always clear. The trend is unmistakably in the direction of banning spanking.
Whether it leaves a mark or not, spanking is the initiation of the use of physical force. Its purpose is to cause pain and to command obedience to the will of the adult. Its consequence is usually humiliation. In light of modern theories of child psychology and child rearing, such adult behavior is unacceptable. Whether every spanking parent should immediately be arrested is an issue of the implementation of new law. A long and unquestioned historical context of using physical force as a teaching technique calls for education of the populace and gradual, not impulsive, execution of the new principle. Uninformed parents can be well-meaning when spanking their children. The complications of parental and child psychology call for a grace period.
Consider the young father of a toddler I observed a number of years ago. I was having my hair cut and the toddler was supposed to be obediently crawling into the barber chair across the way, but he was not cooperating. The father became exasperated and swatted the child on the behind. The boy cried and obediently sat in the chair. What struck me about this incident were the emotional expressions of the father: embarrassment, probably because his child in public view was not “minding” him, and guilt, probably for having had to resort to force. The father’s behavior was not mean-spirited or felonious. He just needed to learn better ways of relating to his son.
In contrast, our daughter’s first experience with a haircut was completely pleasureful. Before getting her near the barber’s chair, her talented hair stylist bounced her on his knee for a few minutes and said funny things to make her laugh. Her haircut was a pleasant success—no need for physical force. Bottom line: it’s all in the technique. Teaching method is everything. The hair stylist used the fun theory of behavioral influence.
The most significant emotion present in all spankings, including the young father’s behavior above, is anger. To be angry enough to inflict pain, one must feel that an injustice has been committed, which then is allegedly righted by the spanking. This is the absurdity of spanking. Has the child committed an injustice? Has he robbed a bank? No, he refused to sit quietly in a barber’s chair! When parental anger in the twenty-first century rises to the level of using an implement, such as a paddle, stick, belt, hairbrush, or wooden spoon, etc., the intent is mean-spirited and sometimes vicious. I do not sympathize with anyone who calls this “reasonable disciplining.”
Psychologies are complex, though, and parents have reportedly cried after using such implements on their children, saying they didn’t mean to or couldn’t help themselves. Is such behavior criminal? Some murderers have regretted their killings and said they couldn’t help themselves. What’s the difference between these two kinds of behavior? One has thousands of years of cultural tradition behind it saying that it is okay to hit children, the other has the same number of years of tradition saying that it is wrong to kill another human being. Saying that it is okay to spank because of our historical tradition is cultural relativism. Other cultures have equal numbers of years of tradition saying that it is okay to hit women and mutilate their genitals. Historical context is only relevant in putting the new law into practice.
Spanking should be a felony because behavior is controllable, and whether or not a mark or bruise is left on the body, physical force has been initiated by a big, powerful adult against a small, helpless child. The issue here is one of fairness to the young father with the toddler in the hair salon. Throwing him in the slammer or putting him on probation would not help him become a better dad. As always, the issue is one of education, of the adult.
*In spite of what animal rights advocates say, dogs are property and rights belong to the owner. Children are human beings and their rights derive from that nature as such.
Hitting is not nice. I’m talking about the non-self-defensive kind, the initiation of the use of physical force to get your way. Its goal is submission. Just think thief with a knife. If you don’t hand over your wallet, that is, submit to the thief’s wishes, you may suffer the physical force of a knife or fist.
Why are dogs and children hit? “Smacking” is a word one still hears today as a recommended teaching method for both. Pre-teen children are not usually known to be aggressive, requiring self-defensive restraint, though some dog breeds have the reputation of being aggressive and unpredictable. And it’s not uncommon to hear something like, “A Rottweiler can bite your nose off. You have to teach him who’s boss. Be the alpha dog!”
Well, let’s take that comment first. I probably could bite a nose off if provoked in the right (or wrong) way, and I suspect many a small dog could do the same. Indeed, in the very act of making a friendly overture, I have been bitten by a small dog. Does dog training require hitting? Does a dog that jumps up on the bed have to be smacked?
Consider the similarities between dogs and children. They both have minds. They both can learn. They both want to please their parents or owners. They both experience (sometimes strong) emotions, which means they can feel confident or insecure, happy or sad, eager or listless. Inappropriate methods of relating to a child or dog by using, say, force and fear can result in insecurity, which in turn leads to compensating behavior. In older children, this can lead to depression, drugs, alcohol, or crime. In dogs, it can lead to uncontrolled aggression. Teaching, whether of dogs or children, requires positive motivation, not negative. The alpha dog notion is a myth.
What about the original sin, or rather, the alleged aggressiveness of certain breeds, such as Rottweilers, Doberman Pinschers,* German Shepherds, and the notorious Pit Bull Terrier?** Uninformed hysterics aside, these dogs all have pleasant temperaments, if trained properly. Hit a dog—or me—and you might be surprised by the attack mode we each quickly move into. As with child rearing, pet ownership requires teaching and is the responsibility of the adult.
Of course, dogs are protective of their families and territory, but again the adult is responsible for the dog’s behavior, just as the adult is responsible for the child who hits a playmate or takes a playmate’s toy without permission. Dog bites are common among unsupervised children. The responsibility of the adult is to teach the child how to approach and relate to animals, not to leave the child alone with a pet. Pulling a tail or ear will certainly generate a response from a dog. Just try pulling my ear and see what will happen!
Higher-level mammals that possess a consciousness also possess a psychology. They are not stimulus-response black boxes. Their psychologies must be acknowledged and interacted with supportively. This does not necessarily mean that your dog should be allowed to sleep on all the furniture in the house or that your child should be allowed to eat ice cream anywhere he or she desires. Teaching, not hitting, which means positive communication and reinforcement, along with the nurturing of a warm relationship, is key to training an animal. This is not much different from what is required for raising a healthy child, except that the techniques used for the child must be more sophisticated in order to be appropriate to the higher level of consciousness. Even then, the techniques used must match the child’s stage of development. This means, for example, not treating the child as a small adult.
Wild horses, unfortunately, are sometimes still broken by tying them to a tree, letting them kick and fight until they give in, that is, are “broken,” so they will finally let a rider get on its back. Come to think of it, human slaves have also been treated the same way. Breaking the spirit is the goal of any initiation of the use of physical force; it is the goal of hitting. Dogs and children do not deserve to be treated this way. Their behaviors, with a little awareness, are predictable and understandable.
Smacking is the tool of a slave owner.
*As an undergraduate, I shared a basement with two Dobermans. (I had my own apartment; they had their own space.) They were two of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever met.
**Contrary to its reputation, the American Pit Bull Terrier can be used as a therapy dog. Are service dogs and all the exotic animals used in the entertainment industry trained by using negative motivation? I don’t think so. Check the links in this post.
A recent New York Timesarticle exposed group projects in business schools as the frauds they have always been. When four or five students are assigned to produce one paper, the outcome should be obvious: at most one-fourth or one-fifth of the learning results, as opposed to the one-hundred percent learning of one student producing the entire paper. Many in groups who defer to others to do the work learn less. This is all done in the name of the division of labor and a simulation of the real world workplace. When I was in graduate school, some fellow students who were currently teaching, or ready to begin teaching, bragged about how the group project reduced their work load: eight papers to grade, say, as opposed to forty.
The Times article exposes other sins of business schools besides group projects, such as students not reading the text (or in some cases not even buying it) or skipping class except for exams. But as usual all of these issues have extenuating circumstances that need to be elaborated. Most of my students work twenty, thirty, or forty hours a week to pay for their union card while at the same time carrying a full load of courses. Some bright students who know they will do well in business explicitly say that they don’t give a hoot about grades—nor do I. And I sometimes tell my students I wish I could give them all A’s for the course on the first day of class, then anyone who wants to come back for the rest of the term to learn would be welcome. The college degree as union card is precisely what it is. All else is pretense.*
The group project, of course, also has its extenuating circumstances that need to be elaborated. It’s not as collectivistic as it sounds. It falls within the theory of cooperative learning and some form of it was used at the Dewey Laboratory School in the late nineteenth century and has been used routinely in nearly all Montessori schools for over a hundred years. The formal theory blossomed after World War II. If structured as a teaching and learning interaction among the participants, everyone can benefit, especially the weaker students.
In a setting where grades are required, the group process must be well structured and highly controlled by the teacher. The comments I hear from my current and former students, and my own experience as a member of groups when I studied for my MBA degree, testify that structure and control by the teacher are nearly always absent. In one class when I was a student, the instructor spent time balancing his checkbook while the students “worked” in their groups. On another occasion, the same instructor went home leaving us by ourselves to continue working on our group projects. After he was comfortably home, we students assumed, the lights of New York City went out for the second time in history—the blackout of 1977 had hit the Big Apple. Is “fraud” too strong a word for this kind of professorial behavior?
The group project in no way simulates real business experience. Most significantly absent in business are the head pats and chastisements known as grades. Further, there exists a division of labor within the groups, or “teams,” as they are usually called, with clearly established authority and skill-levels. Five students in a college classroom who have never met before have none of that. They are thrown into the fire and expected without guidance to survive. Typically, everyone in the group gets the same grade. And teams in business? Often the high performers are rewarded with raises and promotions. No educational system can offer such benefits.
In Montessori schools there are no grades. Younger, less experienced children learn from the older, more experienced ones. They learn by observation and imitation, and from instruction. The older children learn by leading, by setting good examples and by teaching. The process, as business people would say, is “win-win.” There is no complaint about slackers in the group. Slower students may take longer to digest the material with faster students enjoying the process of helping them. An “A,” a “B,” or a “C” does not depend on anyone’s behavior. Learning, not jumping through a hoop to get a biscuit, is the aim of Montessori’s cooperative learning environment.
Group projects and group cooperative learning have their place in education. Just not in the bureaucratically credentialed and grade-driven schools we have today.
In a previous post, I argued that method is primary in education, not content. By method I meant teaching students how to think conceptually. In the process of learning how to think, content would follow. In the current post, I would like to broaden this theme to the primacy of psychology, to teaching the effective use one’s mind in controlling and guiding behavior.
The primacy of psychology means cultivating the development of the child’s independent, uniquely individual self, that is, cultivating the growth of a strong conviction of worthiness and efficacy sufficient to guide the child to acquire the knowledge, values, and skills necessary to live a happy life without making compromises to please others. As I often find myself telling my students, “That last sentence was a mouthful. Let’s break it down into a few digestible chunks.”
First, “worthiness and efficacy” refer to the child’s self-esteem. Not the watered-down superficial stuff that the government schools promote, such as awarding bumper stickers to children for being first in their class for attendance or getting all A’s. This is a comparative award that makes children feel superior to all the others, not loveable or competent. Feeling worthy means “I am loveable, capable of being loved.” It is a deep conviction that begins in the relationship with the children’s parents (and relatives) and continues to develop (or become thwarted) in their relationships with teachers. Positive experiences from such friendships promote worthiness, negative experiences degrade it.
The same is true for the development of efficacy, which is a sense of competence, of being able to do things in the world. Children need frequent senses of accomplishment, whether it be learning the multiplication tables or whittling the image of a dog on a piece of pine. What children accomplish does not matter as long as they keep feeling that sense of accomplishment. Worthiness and efficacy influence and reinforce each other. The feeling “I can’t do it” often leads to the feeling “I’m no good” and the “I’m no good” feeling often leads to and encourages the “I can’t do it.” Self-esteem is prerequisite for and concomitant to the acquisition of an education.
“Knowledge, values, and skills” are the content of education. Because life is action, all education in essence is the acquisition of skill. And skill is the application of knowledge and values whether it be the technique and importance of performing a good car wash, a good weld, a good sale, a good lecture, a good design, or a good moral decision. Everything we do in life is a behavior, driven by what we know and value in the performance of the task. The aim of education, then, is to ensure that we possess sufficient self-esteem to acquire the knowledge and values necessary to pursue our chosen tasks in life. Those tasks may not be reading English literature or solving quadratic equations. They are what the child wants to pursue, not what the teacher wants to teach. Demanding that children study certain subjects in order to be “well-rounded” or exhorting them to acquire “knowledge for its own sake” is a prescription for many to drop out. Control and choice in their own education is what children require for both their self-esteem and their future.*
Finally, “without making compromises to please others” refers to independence (1, 2). Because government-run schools demand the opposite, as do many parents and other adults, independence is the least understood and least taught of psychological skills. Some few children are naturals at standing up for themselves. Most need guidance in understanding that they do not have to go along with their peers or significant adults if they do not agree with what is being asked of them. High self-esteem and a strong sense of personal identity are required to be able to say that the emperor has no clothes. Independence—independent judgment and independent action—can be taught, but educators today have a long way to go before they begin to understand what is required to achieve this feat.
*As I discuss in Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism (pp. 56, 144-46), “well-roundedness” is probably a slap at egoism, because it is “selfish” to concentrate in only one area of interest, and acquiring “knowledge for its own sake” is a hobby of privileged elites.
In education there exists a continuum of how much control is exerted over students or, to put it another way, how much choice is given to them. The scale ranges from the total control and minimal choice of state-run traditional education to the considerable freedom to choose given to students of such alternative schools as Summerhill and Sudbury Valley. With their cleverly designed didactic materials and the choice of which materials to work on, Montessori schools probably fall somewhere in between.
Teachers in all schools vary according to how much control they will exert in the implementation of their school’s ideology and how much choice they will give the students. So even an American public school classroom can enjoy freedom of choice and a Montessori classroom can be tightly controlled. The question is, how much control and choice should there be in education?
One answer for the public school is given by psychiatrist William Glasser:
We are pushing for drug-free schools. We need to push even harder for coercion-free and failure-free quality schools because it is the alienation caused by coercion and punishment that leads young people to turn seriously to drugs (Choice Theory, p. 255).
“Quality school” is Glasser’s term for a B or above mastery learning, failure-free environment for all students. Replacing coercive external control psychology (1, 2), says Glasser, with kind and attentive teacher-student relationships will enable students to develop success identities. Glasser’s approach includes getting rid of the rewards-and-punishment system of grading and punitive detention and principal’s office “solutions” to disruption. Students will then become motivated through the friendly relationships with their teachers to achieve educational goals.
Glasser demonstrates in detail how his coercion-free, failure-free approach to schooling was accomplished with so-called learning disabled students in a Cincinnati middle school (Choice Theory, pp. 259-69; also described here). Smothered with kindness and attention, one hundred forty-eight overaged, “left behind,” probably destined-for-jail middle school students transformed themselves and learned what was required to move on to high school. Removing structural control over the students, adjusting to their pace of learning, and giving them choice in their education led to this success. Removing coercion removed failure.
The ultimate in coercion-free, failure-free schooling is that of Summerhill and Sudbury Valley, where nearly everything is optional—especially courses and class attendance—and the students are given wide control of the schools through the democratic process. The question remains, though, how much control and choice should be left to the students.* This question cannot be answered without understanding that the main structural control in education today is the state’s monopoly over schooling, achieved through compulsory attendance laws, expropriation of funds to pay for the system, and curricular and methodological dictates through the state’s regulatory power. The framework of education is that control and choice are denied to both parents and students.
In the absence of state involvement, that is, in a free market in education, the issue of control and choice becomes a little less clear. If by “control” one means a prescribed curriculum that all students must study, and the parents agree to send their children to such a school, then it is the parents’ legal right to do so. Psychologically, however, one can still argue that greater control and choice be given to the child. Adjusting to pace of learning and catering to interests are two of the most important methodological requirements of a good school. Responding to students as human beings by building Glasserian friendships helps them acquire the confidence to flourish.
Traditional public education denies the legitimacy of control and choice in the classroom and through its coercive bureaucratic framework makes both impossible to maintain for any length of time. It is this context of coercion that makes the likes of Summerhill and Sudbury Valley appealing and probably has contributed to their success. (Indeed, in 1969 or so, when I read the first Summerhill book, I longed to be a student there. I would have thrived.)
As parenting requires guiding in the process of becoming a mature adult, formal education also probably requires at least some guiding in the acquisition of knowledge, values, and skills to achieve independence. Learning to think conceptually, for example, is not automatic and may require direction from an adult. But does this learning have to take place on the adult’s schedule? In the Summerhill/Sudbury model the instructor waits until lessons are requested by the students. Guidance, yes, but not coercion. As responsible parents quickly discover, they cannot force anything into their child’s brain. Children must be won over by persuasion. So, too, with students in education.
*My question presupposes the principle of rights, namely that the students should not be given control or choice to harm others or their property.
The recent hullabaloo over Amy Chua’s Wall Street Journalarticle generated at least one response identifying a similar obsession in American moms. Chua, who acknowledges that her behavior is not unique to the Chinese, coerced her daughters, often punishing and shaming them in numerous and, to many Americans, shocking ways, to insure that the daughters would be the top in their classes and play the “right” musical instruments. The American version emphasizes child beauty pageants, various sports competitions, and after-school SAT courses to game the test and insure acceptance to the “right” colleges. In a previous post, I touched on the achievement-by-proxy motivation of the stage-mother syndrome. Both kinds of parental behavior go by the old-fashioned name of authoritarianism.
The “stage mother” concept illustrates the possible consequences of such an overbearing parent and the Broadway musical Gypsy eloquently dramatizes what can happen. In the musical Rose, the mom, drags her two daughters, June and Louise, from city to city to perform in vaudeville shows. Disliking the pressures of the business, June elopes. Later, as vaudeville begins to wane, Louise stumbles onto a talent for striptease, taking the name and becoming the famous Gypsy Rose Lee. The mom is devastated and in real life—the musical is based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee—becomes estranged from her two daughters for many years.
The psychological consequence of authoritarianism is either rebellion or submission. Rarely is there anything in between. In Gypsy, June and Louise reflect the former reaction to the coercion of their mother. Submission means going along, losing one’s independence and individuality, seldom being able to pursue one’s own interests because of the demands of the activity and parent. Burnout in sports is well known, usually occurring in high school after years of pressured practices, perhaps year round, that began at the age of six. Parents of these pressured kids assume that nothing is wrong, because the child seemingly goes along with all of the practices and tournaments. The parent may even claim that his or her child is having “so much fun.” An outside observer, however, may be compelled to raise an eyebrow and ask, “Is she?” Objectivity may be lost even on well-meaning parents in today’s pressure-cooker life.
There are, of course, exceptions to this overbearing parental control. My brother is a professional musician who began playing the piano at age five, gave a solo recital at age eleven, and practiced something like six hours a day in high school, at one point getting two hours of practice in before school in the morning. I don’t recall a single time in which he was forced by our parents to practice. So did his talent and drive come from our parents? No, we were a blue-collar family and our parents’ musical talent amounted to singing hymns as members of the church congregation. My brother’s motivation was all internally generated. (This is not to say that our parents were not authoritarian. They were, but in other areas of our lives.)
In addition to the strident obedience to authority that the tiger-mom, stage-mom syndrome exhibits, the values pursued are insipidly conventional. Why only piano or violin, as Amy Chua insisted? There are great tuba players in the world and they perform the great tuba concertos. Would it be so terrible if your child played the tuba? Or the banjo? Or did not want to learn a musical instrument at all? The answer is that it would be terrible . . . to the parents’ pseudo-self-esteem. And that is what this hubbub is all about.
The “right” musical instrument, the “right” sport, and the “right” college are right only if the child, not the parent, given family finances, chooses them. The parent may be consultant, cheerleader, and chauffeur, but not dictator over what the child should pursue. Independence and individuality require making one’s own choices and pursuing one’s own chosen values, sometimes in the face of opposition or expressed doubts of others. Success, accomplishment, and self-esteem all result from having done it “my way.”
Playing the “right” musical instrument, the “right” sport, or getting into the “right” college are doing it the Jones’ way. Keeping up with the Joneses and fearing what the Joneses might think are what the tiger-mom, stage-mom parent is most concerned about. This is a prescription for dependence.
In youth sports these days, a favorite refrain from adults, especially male coaches, is “There’s no crying in . . . [name the sport].” The phrase, taken from the 1992 Tom Hanks movie A League of Their Own, has even come into the vernacular with people now saying “there’s no crying in . . . [name the profession].” Certain phrases that become common can be charming, such as “where’s the beef?” or “it’s time to make the donuts,” but this one about crying is not just hurtful, its speakers are woefully unaware of psychology and the full context of the source of the phrase.
Let’s take the source first. Coach Jimmy Dugan, the Hanks character, screams criticism at one of his players for making a mistake. The player, a member of a World War II all-women’s baseball team, cries. Coach Dugan continues to scream, this time in disbelief, and recites the famous line.
A few points about this scene need to be remembered. One is that coach Dugan, who enjoys the bottle, has a less than savory character. Another is that during the screams, Doris, a character played by Rosie O’Donnell, tells the coach to leave Evelyn (the crier) alone. Then, the umpire follows up with this advice to the coach: “Treat each of these girls as you would treat your mother.” At which point the Hanks character lets out an X-rated remark to the man in blue and is promptly ejected. The scene concludes with Doris happily and proudly asserting herself by saying, “I’m in charge now.” The phrase “no crying in baseball” is hardly endorsed as admirable.
So why do so many people, especially men, like to recite this line? And why do they say it to younger and younger kids, especially nine- and ten-year-old girls, playing softball? Does no one remember the 1993 movie In The Line of Fire in which Clint Eastwood, playing a secret service agent, cries on screen? Real men, I’m tempted to say, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries do seem to cry and it seems to be okay. Why isn’t it okay for nine- and ten-year-old girls to cry?
The answer is that many men are embarrassed by crying. They see it as a sign of weakness and will do anything to avoid crying themselves, especially in front of anyone close to them, such as their wives, and certainly not in public. If they are in charge of a sports team and one of their players begins to cry, they become uncomfortable, worrying about what everyone else in the area—parents, opposing coaches, umpires—may be thinking of them. They feel compelled to do something, to fix the situation, hence the exhortations about not crying.
But crying is a sign of pain, not weakness. Striking out for the last out of the inning or making a mistake on the field can be just as painful as taking a line drive on the knee. Pain requires comforting, not rebuke. Telling anyone, especially a child, that it is wrong to feel something only encourages psychological repression, which can lead to a muted emotional life as an adult and unpleasant, angry emotions coming out at the wrong time or place.
There can be complicating factors in the situation that needs to be fixed. A shortstop or pitcher must get out on the field, but is still crying over her strikeout, and the umpire is urging the coach to keep the game moving. However, there are alternatives to rebukes and sending an upset girl to the field with the clichéd line to “shake it off.” Comforting words and a request from the umpire for thirty more seconds can do wonders for the pain of the strikeout and perhaps turn coach into a hero of a ten-year-old girl, maybe even of some of the parents in the stands.
There are also other ways of responding to the “no crying in baseball” line of coach Dugan’s. Why is it just crying that should not be a part of baseball? Why not other emotions, such as laughter or anger? I’m tempted to approach coach Dugan and say something like the following, in disbelief, of course: “Hey coach. Are you angry? . . . You’re angry?? . . .There’s no anger in baseball!”
Sports, especially the youth variety, would probably be a lot more fun if adults abided by that admonition. And if the popularity of this new phrase were to spread, we would soon be saying, “There’s no anger in business . . . or politics . . . or education!” And what about laughter, reducing the argument to the absurd? Can we not also say, “There’s no laughter in baseball!”
The point of this post is that emotions have their place in life, which includes sports. Emotions should not be denied.
Many years ago when I was a young man, I bought a kitchen blender for my then girlfriend as a birthday present. I proudly mentioned this gift to a friend and the friend’s reaction was best described by the expression, “If looks could kill, . . . .” Lesson learned. Not quite the best romantic choice.
The blender principle refers to the art of gift giving and since this is the holiday season, I would like to comment on observations I’ve made in the years since that incident. Of course, Scroogenomics has already chimed in with the economist’s perspective on gift giving, namely that when others shop for us they are unlikely to do as well as we would when we shop for ourselves. And the Wall Street Journal (1, 2, 3) last year provided plenty of horror stories about ill-chosen gifts. The blender principle states that the gift must match the desires of the recipient. Anything else is a disappointment. This means that it is not impossible for a blender to be appreciated by someone who loves to cook, has little money, and talks constantly about the dishes she could make if only she had a blender. For most, women in particular, a blender is just too utilitarian. As my friend put it, “You want to give something that is ‘useless,’ not practical, such as perfume or jewelry.”
The adage “it’s the thought that counts” is correct, and I would add “not the price tag.” The art of gift giving is not easy. It requires knowing well the desires of the recipient, which cannot always be known in advance. No doubt this is why many people throw money at the gift, these days seemingly acting on the premise that the more money thrown, the better the gift—and, presumably for some, the more appreciation expected. Giving according to price, though, is an evasion of thought. It’s as bad a giving a blender, or socks or underwear, or cash or gift card (except perhaps when grandparents do the latter).
One of the most enjoyable and challenging purchases I had to make in my younger years was a gift for a Christmas grab bag. The limit on the gifts was $10, which today would be about $25 or $30. Not a large amount of money and even less information about who was attending the party, except that the attendees were all admirers of capitalism. The challenge was to come up with a gift that was not too specific and not too generic but somewhere in between such that any one of fifteen to twenty people could appreciate it. I think I succeeded, though I no longer remember who got the gift (a book about the monopoly board game) or whether it was appreciated. At least one gift in the bag was non-G rated, indicating a decided misunderstanding of the concept.
A limited price tag on gifts is appealing. It forces the issue on thought. Like the wedding registry, however, most kids and even adults today have resorted to providing givers long lists of preferred items. Add the faux surprise and hyperbolic gushing “how did you know—just what I wanted” upon opening the gift and I begin thinking of the h-word for the whole season. Yes, I am one who suffers holiday season stress. As a result, I have often wished that my family were Jewish. Eight gifts for the children during Hanukkah and the family goes out to dinner at a nice restaurant on Christmas day. That’s it. Instead, lists are beginning to accumulate around our house and the panic I feel on the first day of each month when I have to think of a new blog topic is beginning to set in for the current holiday season.
What I really wish for this holiday season is the elevation of thought and demotion of price in process of gift giving. Victorian England is apparently the origin of our modern tradition, and the Victorians were creative. For example, they had cobweb parties, only vaguely reminiscent of spiders. “Each family member was assigned a color, then shown to a room crisscrossed with yarn of various colors. Each person was to follow an assigned color through the web of yarn until he or she reached the present tied to the end.”
Sounds fun to me! The usual arsenal of gifts under a tree, though, will still probably be required this year.
It is with great trepidation that I write this post. Not ever having been one to talk a lot, I know from experience that if I dare to talk back to a talker I will be talked into the ground. Talkers do not suffer comment lightly, especially when the comment comes from quiet people. Talkers are experts at having the last word, and if they do not like what I say in this post, I am certain that they will tell me.
The theory of the big mouth has a simple premise. The world is run by people who talk a lot. The trouble is that 99.9% (well, some large percentage—I have not conducted a survey) of the talkers do not know what they are talking about. I sometimes fantasize that the world would be a better place if the talkers were to take a holiday one day a month and say nothing for twenty-four hours. Having been a shy, quiet person all my life, I have been on the butt end of many a talker comment. Also, by not talking a lot I have been able to observe much talker behavior. What follows are my comments to talkers, my turn at talking back to them.
The butt end of talker comment is the unsolicited and often rude and ill-mannered advice given to quiet people. “Speak up kid,” “bite your tongue kid,” “you're going to have to learn to speak up or you won't survive in this world,” and that gem of the reverse golden rule given to me as fatherly advice when I was a young man working in business: “you’re going have to learn to do it to others before they do it to you.” Variations on these comments go on ad nauseam. I have often wondered why it is okay for a talker to give unsolicited advice to a quiet person, but rude and ill-mannered for a quiet person to talk back to a talker, for example, by saying something like, “you’re going to have to learn not to talk so much” or “you need to stop and think before speaking.” When any attempt is made like this, the talker usually responds with an indignant “how dare you talk to me that way.” Funny, I always thought advice-giving was a two-way street.
My observations of talkers have shown that many talkers are oblivious to psychology, especially the psychology of the person they are talking to. Often they are just oblivious, unable to see or acknowledge the obvious boredom on the faces of their listeners. It is especially sad, though, to see a parent feeling embarrassed for the behavior of a shy child when, say, the child speaks an inaudible “thank you” or “goodbye” or does not speak up at all. Haranguing children in such situations will not help them become comfortable in the company of other people and encourage them to speak up; it may drive them to become quieter and more withdrawn. Addressing their fears and discomfort is the correct aid. Besides, shyness does tend to decrease with age and maturity. It did for my father, a quiet man most of his life, and today even I, in my older years, talk to strangers!
The “theory of the big mouth,” of course, is an unfriendly designation. In me it renders an image of the bigmouth bass, a fish. What I am really talking about is a variant of Glasser’s external control psychology, best captured by this quote:
The seeds of almost all our unhappiness are planted early in our lives when we begin to encounter people who have discovered not only what is right for them—but also, unfortunately, what is right for us. Armed with this discovery and following a destructive tradition that has dominated our thinking for thousands of years, these people feel obligated to try to force us to do what they know is right. (Choice Theory, p. 4)
And talkers seem to be the ones who know what is right for everyone else, especially those pesky quiet types. It is in the elementary school years when children become aware of right and wrong. As they discover what is right, they often conclude that whatever they do is not just right for themselves but also for everyone else. They fail to acknowledge, and need to be taught, the existence of options, the wide range of behavior that is not the same as theirs, but still is right. If not corrected, this premise can lead to rankism (1, 2, 3) and BS’ing, or worse.
It is not a sin (or disadvantage) to be shy. Remember the western cowboy heroes? They all spoke few words. Indeed, psychologists have found that many people, including the gregarious and famous, feel shy at some times and in some areas of their lives. The entertainer and comedian Johnny Carson several times said that he often felt shy at cocktail parties. The advantage of being a quiet type is that we can sit back and observe what is going on in the world around us and then write about it—as in a blog like this one. And I don’t think I’ve been a failure in life. So talk on you talkers. I’ll just write about you!
When I began working in business, shortly after receiving my bachelor's degree, I experienced a pleasant surprise: I immensely enjoyed what I was doing. Indeed, I felt that working in business was a lot more fun than being a student, so much so that it took nearly six-and-a-half years before I could summon the strength to go to graduate school. I have related this story to a number of people, but never had a good explanation or understanding why being an employee is so much more enjoyable than being a student.
The answer is not the money difference—being paid to do work as opposed to paying the school for an education. It is the feeling of importance. The work itself may not be top-level decision making, which in my case it was not, but every stroke of my pencil mattered. It made the difference in customer satisfaction and company earnings. Everyone in the company contributed to both. The sense of importance also came from the familial atmosphere I experienced with my co-workers and boss, an atmosphere I experienced in every business that I worked for but have not found in any of my academic jobs. Is there something fundamentally different about business and education?
Ask a group of students if they feel important in their school and you are likely to get a blank or incredulous “are you kidding?” stare (Glasser, p. 45). Importance in school, they say, comes from their friends or their extracurricular activities (sports, music, theater, etc.). As a student they feel more like a number on a roster, not overly seen or respected as a person, but as just another piece of produce to be graded and sorted. This, of course, comes from the bureaucratic nature of government-run and -regulated education (1, 2, 3). Grading and sorting are among the main functions of bureaucracy. Students do not feel important because they are not treated the way customers are in privately-run businesses.* Students are not customers, but they should be.
How are customers treated in private businesses? The slogans “customers are number one” and “the customer is always right” gives an indication of the importance of customers to businesses and the importance customers should feel when patronizing most well-run businesses. But what businesses can we compare to education to see what an education customer in a free market might feel? There are today several (relatively) free markets in education. Private lessons, whether piano, personal training, or tutoring, are one. The customer is given the instructor’s full attention and is rarely graded or made to suffer rewards and punishments. Importance is built-in to this type of learning.
Team lessons, especially in sports, are another. While softball and basketball coaches do evaluate players for best position and first or second team, they usually do not employ rewards and punishments of the type that carry the weight of school grades. The players, as a result, have fun working as a team to beat the other teams. There are small private classes, sometimes held in an instructor’s living room or in a rented hotel room. Customers feel relaxed and important to the instructor because they are there just to learn and have fun in the process. They are not there to be graded or tested, the source of anxiety and decreased feelings of importance. Finally, there are large private classes—lectures—sometimes given in hotel ballrooms. No grades, no tests. The customers are there to learn and take away from the lecture what they want. They are important to the lecturer for the revenue he or she earns. They may not have personal contact and receive personal attention from the lecturer, but the atmosphere nevertheless is pleasant—far more pleasant than the impersonal grad-student run megasections many of us have endured in research universities.
Clearly, it is the critical, comparative grade-and-sort atmosphere of government-run education that eliminates almost any chance for the student (customer) to acquire a sense of importance. Throw in at the K-12 level the compulsory attendance laws and you have students, especially at the secondary level, who have the sense of being in jail.**
The bureaucratic nature of education also makes it difficult for faculty to enjoy the familial atmosphere I experienced in private businesses. As professors, we have to fill out the right forms (and get our hands slapped if we don’t) and comply with the myriad rules. Customer satisfaction and earnings are irrelevant, so there is no benchmark of performance or importance. Conflict frequently erupts with the lack of a common goal. With guaranteed lifetime employment, the “family” sometimes becomes enmeshed in what seems like a marriage “without the possibility of divorce.” The stakes in such a situation have become too small.
* I include private universities, including the for-profits, in the category of bureaucratic education, because they are regulated and therefore their culture is controlled and defined by the government.
** Craig Haney and Philip Zimbardo, “It’s Tough to Tell a High School from a Prison,” Psychology Today, June 1975. Also, see John Holt, The Underachieving School.
In economics the principle of unilateral free trade (1, 2, 3) holds that everyone benefits when one country by itself, ignoring what others may do, eliminates all tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. Cheap imports increase the standard of living both at home and in the exporting country. The historical experiment and demonstration of this principle was the repeal of England's Corn Laws in 1846. Other countries followed England's lead and for a brief time peace, the natural consequence of free trade, was achieved.*
In human relationships psychiatrist William Glasser, whose choice theory I discussed in a previous post, offers a similar principle: in spite of what others may do (assuming the absence of physical abuse or attack), eliminate all habits of external control psychology from one's own behavior. The result will be less stress—from trying and failing to control the other person's behavior—and may even bring about a sense of calm. And the other person, says Glasser, may notice your change leading to a discussion of internal control psychology and new ways of relating to one another. Peace within the relationship may be achieved.
This strategy of unilateral refusal to use external control tactics is especially effective with teenagers, but works well in all relationships. Teenagers are not yet fully mature and can therefore afford guidance from parents, but they also want to be independent of their parents and resist attempts at control. Parents in the meantime instinctively practice all of Glasser's deadly habits—criticizing, blaming, complaining, nagging, threatening, punishing, and bribing, plus many other variations—and protest that if none of these are used the child will not learn or mature or become responsible, etc. But parents in Glasser's practice who have stood down from using the external control habits have found their teenagers coming back to them, opening up, and even asking for advice. "When you stop controlling," as Glasser says (chapter 1), "you gain control." The strength of the relationship is what gives the parent influence. The deadly habits erode and destroy both.
The value of eliminating external control tactics with students, a relationship that is not unlike that of parents to teenagers, has been demonstrated abundantly by Glasser in numerous books (1, 2, for example). Other factors may complicate matters in couples and work relationships. A mature adult can choose to walk away from either or both. And a spouse or boss may not be willing to try to make the relationship work. Nevertheless, one-sided abandonment of external control, notably the "CBC's" (criticizing, blaming, and complaining), can work wonders in improving a relationship. Criticizing, says Glasser, is the most corrosive habit one can use in any relationship, but it is particularly harmful in marriages. Caring, trusting, listening, supporting, negotiating, befriending, and encouraging—Glasser's connecting habits—bring people closer together (1, 2).
Work relationships sometimes pose a challenge if the employee feels stuck and cannot move to a new job. The boss should be practicing what Glasser calls lead management, the application of choice theory to managing employees, but what if the boss is external control to the point of being almost drill-sergeant harsh? What can the employee do? Abandoning external control and practicing the connecting habits are a must, but offering an occasional compliment might melt some of the insecurities that seem to motivate such a boss. And reminding yourself constantly that you are choosing to remain in that position, choosing to stay for the benefits, for example, or to stay until economic conditions improve, can help. Internal control means choosing one's own behavior. Knowing that builds confidence and contentment.
The connection between internal control psychology and free trade is simple. The former is a theory of human relationships, of how people get along with one another on a personal basis, whereas the latter is a theory of human relationships occurring within the social institutions of business and society. The latter is the implementation of the former and there is no place for external control in either relationships or trade.** This is why advocates of capitalism argue that the monolithic and historical practitioner of external control, the government, should be prevented permanently from intruding into all aspects of our personal and business lives.
* "If goods don't cross borders, armies will" is a phrase attributed to French economist Frederic Bastiat. It emphasizes the connection between free trade and peace.
** Indeed, Ayn Rand calls the trader principle the foundation of all rational human relationships, because it is the principle of justice.
