Dear Tipsters,
I was recently in Beijing, China (love retirement!) and had lunch with an English-speaking friend from previous visits. She has a six-year-old son in a large public school and wrote me the following note, which she has given me permission to forward to you with names changed for comments. Since I find the whole approach inhumane and counter- productive, I thought I'd ask others with more affinity to behavioral practices to help me respond to her. You may also want to use this note as an example for your classes. Thanks for any help you can give us.
Since Sandy is teaching psychology class, I have one question about Li's education which troubles me and I hope to find an answer from Sandy. The problem has something to do with Li's Chinese* teacher who is very conscientious. She also oversees the class in all aspects, including group behavior and manners. She is using certain criteria to measure the behaviors of the students, which consists of 9 requirements such as no fidgeting in class, etc. Any student who fulfills 8 of the 9 requirements can win 1 point each day, and if the student gets 5 points for a school week, he/she will be given a red paper flower which will be nailed beside his/her name on the wall. Also red paper flowers and stars are given to good students who behave well in class from time to time. Li got no red flowers beside his name and only got 5 flowers in his notebook in the 2 months of schooling. Some other kids already got 50 or 60 flowers by that time. What's worse, 2 of the 5 flowers of Li were taken back again last week by the Chinese teacher for disapproved behavior, so Li only has 3 flowers now. I am troubled by the poor performance of Li at school and am at a loss about how to encourage Li to fulfill the requirements of his Chinese teacher. On the other hand I find the act of taking back distributed flowers quite annoying to me, because I think it will gradually destroy the value Li holds about honor and credit. Surely Li is not a perfectand sometimes act not well, but he is not as bad as the teacher views. I wonder what I should do about this problem. Thanks a lot for your comments, Sandy.
* He also has some American teachers.)
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