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Rewards and Punishment

 

The danger in rewarding a child is not as extreme as that of punishing him, but the undermining of the child’s morale through the giving of rewards is more subtle. Rewards are superfluous and negative. To offer a prize for doing a deed is tantamount to declaring that the deed is not worth doing for its own sake.

 

No artist ever works for a monetary reward only. One of his rewards is the joy of creating. Moreover, reward supports the worst feature of the competitive system. To get the better of the other man is a damnable objective.

 

Giving rewards has a bad psychological effect on children because it arouses jealousies. A boy’s dislike of a younger brother often dates from mother’s remark, “Your little brother can do it better than you can.” To the child, mother’s remark is a reward given to brother for being better than he is.

 

When we consider a child’s natural interest in things, we begin to realize the dangers of both reward and punishment. Rewards and punishment tend to pressure a child into interest. But true interest is the life force of the whole personality, and such interest is completely spontaneous. It is possible to compel attention for attention is an act of consciousness. It is possible to be attentive to an outline on the blackboard and at the same time to he interested in pirates. Though one can compel attention, one cannot compel interest. No man can force me to be interested in, say, collecting stamps; nor can I compel myself to be interested in stamps. Yet both reward and punishment attempt to compel interest.

 

I have a large garden. A group of little boys and girls would be of great assistance during weeding time. To order them to help me with my work is quite possible. But these children of eight, nine and ten years of age have formed no opinion of their own on the necessity of weeding. They are not interested in weeding.

 

I once approached a group of small boys. “Anyone want to help me do some weeding” I asked. They all refused.

 

I asked why. The answers came: “Too dull!” “Let them grow.” “Too busy with this crossword puzzle” “Hate gardening.”

 

I, too, find weeding dull. I, too, like to tackle a crossword puzzle. To be quite fair to those youngsters, of what concern is the weeding to them? It is my garden. I get the pride in seeing the peas come through the soil. I save money on vegetable bills. In short, the garden touches my self-interest. I cannot compel an interest in the children, when the interest does not originate in them. The only possible way would be for me to hire the children at so much an hour. Then, they and I would be on the same basis: I would be interested in my garden, and they would be interested in making some extra money.

 

Interest is, at root, always egoistic. Maud, aged fourteen, often helps me in the garden, although she declares that she hates gardening. But she does not hate me. She weeds because she wants to be with me. This serves her self-interest for the moment.



 

When Derrick, who also dislikes weeding, volunteers to help me, I know he is going to renew his request for a pocketknife of mine that he covets. That is his only interest in the matter.

 

A reward should, for the most part, be subjective: self-satisfaction in the work accomplished. One thinks of the ungratifying jobs of the world: digging coal, fitting nut No. 50 to bolt No. 51, digging drains, adding figures. The world is full of jobs that hold no intrinsic interest or pleasure. We seem to be adapting our schools to this dullness in life. By compelling our students’ attention to subjects, which hold no interest for them, we, in effect, condition them for jobs they will not enjoy.

 

If Mary learns to read or count, it should be because of her interest in these subjects--not because of the new bicycle she will get for excellence in study or because Mother will be pleased.

 

One mother told her son that if he stopped sucking his thumb, she would give him a radio set. What an unfair conflict to give any child! Thumb sucking is an unconscious act, beyond the control of will. The child may make a brave, conscious effort to stop the habit. But like the compulsive masturbator, he will fail again and again, and thereby acquire a mounting load of guilt and misery.

 

Parental fear of the future is dangerous when such fear expresses itself in suggestions that approach bribery: “When you learn to read, darling, Daddy will buy you a scooter.” That way leads to a ready acceptance of our greedy, profit-seeking civilization. I am glad to say that I have seen more than one child prefer illiteracy to a shiny, new bicycle.

 

A variant of this form of bribery is the declaration that seeks to touch off the child’s emotions: “Mommy will be very unhappy if you are always at the bottom of the class.” Both methods of bribery bypass the child’s genuine interests.

 

I have equally strong feelings about getting children to do our jobs. If we want a child to work for us, we ought to pay him according to his ability. No child wants to collect bricks for me just because I’ve decided to rebuild a broken wall. But if I offer a few cents a barrow load, a boy may help willingly, for then I’ve enlisted his self-interest. But I do not like the idea of making a child’s weekly pocket money depend on his doing certain chores. Parents should give without seeking anything in return.

 

Punishment can never be dealt out with justice, for no man can be just. Justice implies complete understanding. Judges are no more moral than garbage collectors, nor are they less free of prejudice. A judge who is a strong conservative and a militarist could find it difficult to be just to an anti-militarist arrested for crying “Down with the Army.”

 

Consciously or unconsciously, the teacher who is cruel to a child who has committed a sexual offense is almost certain to have deep feelings of guilt toward sex. In a law court, a judge with unconscious homosexual leanings would likely be very severe in sentencing a prisoner charged with homosexual practices.

 

We cannot be just because we do not know ourselves, and do not recognize our own repressed strivings. This is tragically unfair to the children. An adult can never educate beyond his own complexes. If we ourselves are bound by repressed fears, we cannot make our children free. All we do is to bestow upon our children our own complexes.

 

If we try to understand ourselves we find it difficult to punish a child on whom we are venting the anger that belongs to something else. Years ago, in the old days, I whacked boys again and again because I was worried--the inspector was coming, or I had had a quarrel with a friend. Or any other old excuse would serve me in place of self-understanding, of knowing what I was really angry about. Today, I know from experience that punishment is unnecessary. I never punish a child; never have any temptation to punish a child.

 

Recently I said to a new pupil, a boy who was being antisocial, “You are pulling all these silly tricks merely to get me to whack you, for your life has been one long whacking. But you are wasting your time. I won’t punish you, whatever you do.” He gave up being destructive. He no longer needed to feel hateful.

 

Punishment is always an act of hate. In the act of punishing, the teacher or parent hates the child--and the child realizes it. The apparent remorse or tender love that a spanked child shows toward his parent is not real love. What the spanked child really feels it hatred, which he must disguise in order not to feel guilty. For the spanking has driven the child into fantasy! I wish my father would drop dead. The fantasy immediately brings guilt – I wanted my father to die! What a sinner I am. And the remorse drives the child to the father’s knee in seeming tenderness. But underneath, the hatred is already there--and to stay.

 

What is worse, punishment always forms a vicious circle. Spanking is vented hatred, and each spanking is bound to arouse more and more hatred in the child. Then as his increased hatred is expressed in still worse behavior, more spankings are applied. And these second-round spankings reap added dividends of hatred in the child. The result is a bad-mannered, sulky, destructive little hater, so inured to punishment that he sins in order a trigger some sort of emotional response from his parents. For even a hateful emotional response will do when there is no love or emotion. And so the child is beaten--and he repents. But the next morning he begins the same old cycle again.

 

So far as I have observed the self-regulated child does not need any punishment and he does not go through this hate cycle. He is never punished and he does not need to behave badly. He has no use for lying and for breaking things. His body has never been called filthy or wicked. He has not needed to rebel against authority or to fear his parents. Tantrums he will usually have, but they will be short-lived and not tend toward neurosis.

 

True, there is difficulty in deciding what is and what is not punishment. One day, a boy borrowed my best saw. The next day I found it lying in the rain. I told him that I should not lend him that saw again. That was not punishment, for punishment always involves the idea of morality. Leaving the saw out in the rain was bad for the saw, but the act was not an immoral one. It is important for a child to learn that one cannot borrow someone else’s tools and spoil them, or damage someone property or someone else’s person. For to let a child have his own way, or do what he wants to at another’s expense, is bad for the child. It creates a spoiled child, and the spoiled child is a bad citizen.

 

Some time ago, a little boy came to us from a school where he had terrorized everyone by throwing things about and even threatening murder. He tried the same game with me. I soon concluded that he was using his temper for the purpose of alarming people and thus getting attention.

 

One day, on entering the playroom I found the children all clustered together at one end of the room. At the other end stood the little terror with a hammer in his hand. He was threatening to hit anyone who approached him.

 

“Cut it out, my boy,” I said sharply. “We aren’t afraid of you.”

 

“He dropped the hammer and rushed at me. He bit and kicked me.

 

“Every time you hit or bite me,” I said quietly, “I’ll hit you back” And I did. Very soon he gave up the contest and rushed from the room.

 

This was not punishment. It was a necessary lesson: learning that one cannot go about hurting others for his own gratification.

 

Punishment in most homes is punishment for disobedience. In school too, disobedience and insolence are looked upon as bad crimes. When I was a young teacher and in the habit of spanking children, as most teachers in Britain were allowed to do, I always was most angry with the boy who had disobeyed me. My little dignity was wounded. I was the tin god of the classroom just as Daddy is the tin god of the home. To punish for disobedience is to identify oneself with the omnipotent Almighty: Thou shalt have no other Gods.

 

Later on, when I taught in Germany and Austria, I was always ashamed when teachers asked me if corporal punishment was used in Britain. In Germany, a teacher who strikes a pupil is tried for assault, and generally punished. The flogging and strapping in British schools is one of our greatest disgraces.

 

A doctor in one of our large cities said to me once, “There is a brute of a teacher at the head of one of our schools here, who beats the children cruelly. I often have nervous children brought to me because of him, but I can do nothing. He has public opinion and the law on his side.”

 

Not too long ago, the papers carried the story of a case in which a judge told two erring brothers that if they had only had a few good hidings, they would never have appeared in court. As the evidence unfolded, it developed that the two boys had been beaten almost nightly by their father.

 

Solomon with his rod theory has done more harm than his proverbs have done good. No man with any power of introspection could beat a child, or could even have the wish to beat a child.

 

To repeat: hitting a child gives him fear only when it is associated with a moral idea, with the idea of wrong. If a street urchin knocked off my hat with a lump of clay and I caught him and gave him a swat on the ear, my reaction would be considered by the boy to be a natural one. No harm would have been done to the boy’s soul. But if I went to the principal of his school and demanded punishment for the culprit, the fear introduced by the punishment would be a bad thing for the child. The affair would at once become an affair of morals and of punishment. The child would feel that he had committed a crime.

 

The ensuing scene can easily be imagined! I stand there with my muddy hat. The principal sits and fixes the boy with a baleful eye. The boy stands with lowered head. He is overawed by the dignity of his accusers. Running him down on the street, I had been his equal. I had no dignity after my hat had been knocked off. I was just another guy. The boy had learned a necessary lesson of life--the lesson that if you hit a guy he’ll get angry and sock you back.

 

Punishment has nothing to do with hot temper. Punishment is cold and judicial. Punishment is highly moral. Punishment avows that it is wholly for the culprit’s good. (In the case of capital punishment, it is for society’s good.) Punishment is an act in which man identifies himself with God and sits in moral judgment.

 

Many parents live up to the idea that since God rewards and punishes, they too should reward and punish their children. These parents honestly try to be just, and they often convince themselves that they are punishing the child for his own good. This hurts me more than it hurts you is not so much a lie as it is a pious self-deception. One must remember that religion and morality make punishment a quasi-attractive institution. For punishment salves the conscience. “I have paid the price!” says the sinner.

 

At question time in my lectures, an old-timer often stands up and says, “My father used his slipper on me, and I don’t regret it, sir! I would not have been what I am today if I had not been beaten.” I never have the temerity to ask, “By the way, what exactly are you today?”

 

To say that punishment does not always cause psychic damage is to evade the issue, for we do not know what reaction the punishment will cause in the individual in later years. Many an exhibitionist, arrested for indecent exposure, is the victim of early punishment for childish sexual habits.

 

If punishment were ever successful, there might be some argument in its favor. True, it can inhibit through fear, as any ex-soldier can tell you. If a parent is content with a child who has had his spirit completely broken by fear, then, for such a parent, punishment succeeds.

 

What proportion of chastised children remain broken in spirit and castrated for life, and what proportion rebel and became even more antisocial, no one can say. In fifty years of teaching in schools, I have never heard a parent say, “I have beaten my child and now he is a good boy.” On the contrary, scores of times, I have heard the mournful story, “I have beaten him, reasoned with him, helped him in every way, and he has grown worse and worse.”

 

The punished child does grow worse and worse. What’s more, he grows into a punishing father or a punishing mother, and the cycle of hate goes on through the years.

 

I have often asked myself, “Why is it that parents, who are otherwise kind, tolerate cruel schools for their children?” There parents seem, primarily, to be concerned about a good education for their children. What they overlook is that a punishing teacher will compel interest, but the interest he compels is in the punishment and not in the sums on the blackboard. As a matter of fact, the majority of our top students in schools and colleges sink into mediocrity later on. Their interest in making good was born, for the most part, of the parental pushing, and they had little real interest in the subject.

 

Fear of teachers and fear of the punishments they deal out is bound to affect the relationship between the parent and the child. For symbolically, every adult is a father or a mother to the child. And every time a teacher punishes, the child acquires a fear and a hate of the adult behind the symbol--a hate of his father or a hate of his mother. This is a disturbing thought. Though children are not conscious of the feeling, I have heard a boy of thirteen say, “My last principal used to hog me a lot, and I can’t understand why my father and mother kept me at that school. They knew he was a cruel brute, but they didn’t do anything about it.”

 

The punishment that takes the form of a lecture is even more dangerous than a whipping. How awful those lectures can be! “But didn’t you know you were doing wrong?” A sobbing nod. “Say you are sorry for doing it.”

 

As training for humbugs and hypocrites, the lecture form of punishment has no rival. Worse still is praying for the erring soul of the child in his presence. That is unpardonable, for such an act is bound to arouse a deep feeling of guilt in the child.

 

Another type of punishment – non-corporal but just as injurious to a child’s development--is nagging. How many times have I heard a mother nag her ten-year-old daughter all day long: Don’t go in the sun, darling… Dearest, please keep away from the railing…. No, love, you can’t go into the swimming pool today; you will catch your death of cold! The nagging is certainly not a love token: it is a token of the mother’s fear that covers an unconscious hate.

 

I wish that the advocates of punishment could all see and digest the delightful French film telling the life story of a crook. When the crook was a boy, he was punished for some misdeed by being forbidden to partake of the Sunday evening meal of poisoned mushrooms. Afterward, as he watched all the family coffins being carried out, he decided that it didn’t pay to be good. An immoral story with a moral, which many a punishing parent cannot see.

 


Date: 2015-12-11; view: 855


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