The Kinds of Adults We’re Creating

Quite often when we describe the alternative approach to discipline in high schools that we use at 121, people ask whether a good caning wouldn’t be the solution to disciplinary problems. Here is our response:

A caning is a great short term solution. If you punish a learner enough with corporal punishment and instill sufficient fear in him then perhaps for the duration of his school years he will tow the line. But the question we ask is, what kind of an adult are we creating? Our interest is not in having a learner be well behaved according to the school system for the five years of high schools. Our interest is in instilling values in a young person that will affect the kind of adult they become long after school is finished.

This kind of intervention is not a quick-fix and it doesn’t happen over night. Values need to be taught repeatedly over a period of time. But more importantly than teaching values ‘from the front’ (as information relayed to an audience) they need to be modeled and lived. It is as we model the values we teach that learners start to take notice.

A prime example of this is learners who test us. There are learners that go out of their way to test our boundaries and see what it will take to make us lose our tempers. They’re not testing us so much as they are testing the values we teach. When we look at the topic of anger, we teach them how to turn their anger into effective communication. Instead of raging at another person they learn to channel their anger to something more positive. Of course, at the first opportunity learners test this on us. What would it take to make us angry? If they were to make us angry enough, would we rage at them, thereby undermining our message? This is where lived values become more important than any information we could relay from the front. It is learning in action.

We would love to influence the way learners behave at school. We would love to see them practicing values that are both positive for them and for the people around them in the school environment. But even more than this, we would love these young people to internalize these values for the long term. We would like to impact lives so that we are impacting the very kinds of adults we are creating.

We could give young people a good smack and assume this sorts out their bad behaviour. But what are we depositing into their lives that they can carry into their adult years? Every intervention we design at 121 has the goal of our broader society in mind. Are we releasing into society young people who are able to make a positive contribution to society as adults? This is the real challenge of all educators.