Principals' big mistake

The phrase, “Do that one more time, and I’m sending you to the principal,” should elicit from students shudders, not visions of Pop-Tarts and peppermints.

Originally published in the Moultrie News.

The old days of the principal being the cold disciplinarian are over. Principals now work on creating relationships with misbehaving students, and isn’t this a better way?

I think the old way worked better because it actually taught the child to check his impulses, and that’s essential to improving behavior. Most kids realize they shouldn’t have done what got them into hot water once they’ve had a chance to calm down. The trick is to get them to think about that beforehand. Nothing does that more effectively than discomfort.

That’s not Stallings. That’s science. Behavioral psychology teaches us that punishment (reasonably and appropriately administered, of course) reduces unwanted behaviors over time. As its use by both schools and parents has faded, school discipline problems have risen.

In the place of consequences, many administrators have turned to relationships to induce students to behave better. This isn’t working. As teachers tell it, a big reason for the failure is that many principals apparently do not have the faintest idea of how to forge an appropriate relationship with students.

The kind of relationship that would teach children to change their conduct from bad to good requires raising them closer to our level, not condescending to theirs. Many principals do the latter by behaving like the child’s peer. Others drop even further, treating children like animals by giving them food in exchange for behaviors. If I walk into a disciplinarian’s office and see boxes of candy or snacks, I already know this individual has the wrong idea. Food is not a relationship.

Neither is petting, preening, or pacifying the child. Nor is supporting the student in how mean he thinks the teacher is. Nor is dismissing the teacher’s referral, lessening the charges, or giving the child special privileges. All of these are in widespread use among principals, and each makes it more likely that one day the child will be fired, incarcerated, or insufferable.

If this is what administrators mean by a relationship (and many do), it’s all wrong. Praise and protein are what you throw at very young students when they’re doing the right thing, not after they get sent out of class. A detention or suspension, on the other hand, will make the child think next time, “Whoa, do I really want to say what I’m about to say?”

Giving kids candy or stroking their egos makes it more likely they’ll view the principal’s office as a warm spot, an oasis, a womb, and this reinforces the bad behavior that got them sent there in the first place. That’s why the positive effects of such a relationship, such as they are, almost never transfer to anyone else in the building other than the one handing out the food.

So in my experience, the cold disciplinarian is better than the fuzzy food-giver. But there is a third way that combines, strengthens, and improves upon the best of them both, and it’s a philosophy all the best principals I’ve had the privilege of working for have employed. Let’s call it “disciplineship.”

Disciplineship eschews false praise for honesty. It deals in hard but necessary truths, not chips and trinkets. It shows compassion, but it doesn’t avoid conflict and consequences; rather, it helps the child cope with them. It explains to the child what he did wrong, why he is being punished, how to manage the consequences, and what he can do to improve in the future — not just the future as in Mrs. Smith’s math class, but the future as in his vocation.

We’re making things a lot harder than they need to be. All we need from the principal is to be respected by students even up to the point of being feared. The phrase, “Do that one more time, and I’m sending you to the principal,” should elicit from students shudders, not visions of Pop-Tarts and peppermints.

And if the principal is wise enough to incorporate a caring dose of instruction as well, so much the better.

Read the original article here.