shminux comments on Useful Concepts Repository - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 10 June 2013 06:12AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (105)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 10 June 2013 09:09:05AM 9 points [-]

Unfortunately, this quick example is something that teachers and school administration often don't get. If you make a threat for misbehavior, you must follow through, otherwise you have seriously undermined your and every other teacher's credibility, and then you will predictably get misbehavior on almost every lesson since now.

Unfortunately, the reality is often that teachers make empty threats, hoping that using big words will scare students, and when this does not work, they rationalize not following through by "they are just children" and "they need to get a second chance", although some students already had literally hundreds of "second" chances. And the worst thing is when teacher insists on the punishment, but after a phone call from parent, the school administration overrides their decision. Of course students share their "success stories", so the next day the whole school know about the winning strategy.

Comment author: shminux 10 June 2013 10:57:13PM 7 points [-]

Unfortunately, this quick example is something that teachers and school administration often don't get.

It is possible that their target audience is their superiors, not the students. Threat is cheap, punishment is expensive, and they can always report to their superiors (and possibly parents) "we do not condone this behavior, see, we threatened them with <punishment>".