I agree. I don't believe Igor intended to mean punishment, even if
punishment is what he said. He is not native to the English language or
idioms.
When he spoke of the child, he spoke of allowing the consequence of the
child's actions to occur. Not that the parent punished the child. This
is very valid and in my opinion often preferred. You can explain and
teach. But at some point the individual will make a choice to abide by
what was taught or explained or to possibly test the teaching and see if
it is true. Children do this all the time. Their prime thought is to
test what they are taught and to challenge it. Only after a sufficient
number of confirmations do they give a certain amount of implicit trust
to the teacher or parent.
Fire in Igor's example is a common example for teaching children.
Parent's who childproof their home generally do their children and
themselves a disservice. I am a father of 10 children, 28-4 years of
age. I have never had a child burn themselves on a heater, or hurt
themselves significantly falling down the stairs.
Consequences, good and bad are a prime means of learning.
But consequences should be appropriate for action. If we have within our
power, and sometimes we do and sometimes we don't, have the ability to
determine the consequences, then we should do so in consideration of
what we are protecting, rewarding, punishing. How do we want the
standard of behavior to be in that situation.
Just my thoughts.
Back to lurking.
Jimmie
On 01/09/2014 03:30 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe wrote:
I don't think Igor meant punishment as a tool, but rather experience something
negative for yourself.
I am sure that if you think back at your own development, there were instances
where you did not listen to adults warning you and only learned certain things
the hard way.
Anyway, we're getting way off topic ;-)
On 09 Jan 2014, at 22:25, Stephan Eggermont <step...@stack.nl> wrote:
Igor,
The way you describe the role of punishment in education is not in line with
current research. Most learning happens trough copying the behavior of others,
and punishment has a number of negative consequences on character development,
making it a non-suitable instrument. You might want to take a look at the work
done by Marshall Rosenberg on non-violent communication.
Stephan
