Why Do We Think About Everything BUT Consequences?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses how education has become allergic to consequences, focusing on every other variable while ignoring the most obvious solution.
Key Takeaways
- Consequences are the missing piece - Schools focus on relationships, SEL, restorative practices, and trauma-informed care while avoiding the one thing that would help most
- Without consequences, there are built-in incentives to misbehave - When nothing happens after misbehavior, the rational choice is to misbehave
- Add consequences back - The simplest improvement most schools could make is restoring consistent, fair consequences
Transcript
Can we address bad behavior without consequences?
I saw yet another post today from a principal who was really at a wit's end about helping a student improve his behavior.
And this is a student who's been hurting people, punching people, kicking people, pinching people, throwing playground equipment, like pretty serious stuff, cussing people out, flipping people off.
And the school has tried just about everything.
They said that they've tried a behavior plan, breaks, incentives, rewards, talking with a student, restorative practices, they've tried everything, and then in the comments, about a dozen people had replied, and only one of them said anything about consequences.
And I found that really interesting, and I wonder if we're almost developing kind of a blindness to this issue or just kind of a complete inability to see the way that incentives work when there are no consequences.
Like if this kid is getting attention from hurting other people, if this kid is getting power over everybody else around him from other people, and if this kid is getting actual rewards for hurting other people, like a choice time that other kids don't get Why on earth would that kid ever improve his behavior?
Why would he stop hurting people if he has all these incentives to keep doing it?
And this is so obvious.
I was really surprised that I was like the 13th person to comment or the 12th person to comment and only one other person had said anything about consequences.
Like how are we developing this blindness toward obvious consequences?
Incentives for student behavior like if you get power if you get attention if you get rewards for hurting people What do we think is going to happen?
Like why don't we just like start writing kids a check to punch other kids like that's pretty much the point we're at when we have these systems of incentives in place and no consequences and it's so easy to to tip the scales, right?
It is so easy to say, you don't get to do that.
You go home if you do that.
You don't get to punch other people in the throat or you go home.
It's not that complicated and yet we're acting like it's a mystery.
We're acting like we don't understand why this is happening or how we can stop it.
Look, it's pretty clear.
It's pretty simple.
Restorative practices might be part of the solution, but consequences are definitely part of the solution.
Let me know what you think.