Imagine that!

We can allow ourselves to begin to imagine what a better world could be

Once we are operating in the paradigm that is emerging to replace Behaviourism (still no name but based on the teacherly authority principal!) the idea of punishing someone – anyone, but especially a child – becomes, literally, unthinkable.  Shaping someone’s behaviour by either reward or punishment is no longer a thing.

Under the new paradigm behaviour becomes self-regulating with the student actively avoiding disruptions to maintain shared attention with their teacher.

Young people will sometimes do stupid or thoughtless things which have consequences, and those consequences will still be felt. Losing the desire to punish does not mean the emergence of a laissez faire approach to behaviour.

It is worth imagining what such a world would be like because that is what is struggling to emerge.  When we are no longer responsible for others’ behaviour, because if we set things up correctly, they are responsible for their own behaviour, then we have more time and attention to focus on what we want to teach and what we can learn from our engaging fully with our students.

What we teach will be a mix of content, as now, but with a larger share of modelling, mentoring and coaching of and around the core capacities that young people need to properly develop to become well-rounded and capable adults.

A more enjoyable place to be.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation.  At the core of this work is the concept and practice of teacherly authority.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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