March 7th, 2009 by Robin Green
In his article, “Why Self-Discipline is Overrated: The (Troubling) Theory and Practice of Control from Within,” Alfie Kohn poses the question in reference to learning systems: “Why do we find ourselves so infatuated with self-discipline and self-control?” The answer, he says, may involve basic values that pervade our culture. What must be true about children–and people in general–if self-discipline and self-control are necessary to make oneself do something worth doing, in a learning system or otherwise?
The infatuation with self-discipline in learning systems has a long and murky history. Kohn cites David Brooks, a conservative newspaper columnist: “In Lincoln’s day, to achieve maturity was to succeed in the conquest of the self. Human beings were born with sin, inflected with dark passions and satanic temptations. The transition to adulthood consisted of achieving mastery over them. You can read commencement addresses from the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the speakers would talk about the beast within and the need for iron character to subdue it. Schoolhouse readers emphasized self-discipline. The whole character-building model was sin-centric.”
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March 7th, 2009 by Robin Green
Another slippery issue is the kind of motivation received and exhibited in LMS-hosted and classroom learning systems. Just as the kind of self-discipline is as important as the quantity, so it is with motivation.
Intrinsic motivation consists of wanting to do something for its own sake–to read, for example, for the pleasure of reading along. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation exists when the task isn’t quite the main point; one might read in order to receive a reward or a good grade. These two kinds of motivation are not only different, but they tend to be inversely related.
Studies show that the more you reward people for doing something, the greater chance that they will lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. Researchers have found that giving children “positive reinforcement” for being helpful and generous ends up undermining those very behaviors, and encouraging students to improve their grades results in their becoming less interested in a learning system.
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March 7th, 2009 by Robin Green
Of course, not every child who shows self-discipline in a learning system has vulnerability, compulsion or control issues. So what sets apart a healthy sense of self-discipline and an unhealthy one? Moderation is good, but more important is flexibility.
What counts, writes Alfie Kohn, is the ability to choose whether and when to exhibit grit and perseverance in a task, or follow each and every rule, rather than simply doing these things compulsively. This ability, rather than self-discipline or self-control per se, is what students would truly benefit from developing in a learning system, and in life. “It’s becoming clearer,” Kohn writes, “that what can be problematic about self-discipline isn’t just a matter of how much but what kind.”
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March 6th, 2009 by Robin Green
I’ve been writing about how self-discipline and self-control in classroom learning systems should be emphasized less and differently. The array of traits that can enhance a student’s experience in a learning system and enrich his or her life extends beyond this ideal. And the practice of impressive self-discipline can actually be damaging for a child.
In his article, “Why Self-Discipline is Overrated: The (Troubling) Theory and Practice of Control from Within,” Alfie Kohn cites research by Jack Block. He says that the tendency to persist at a task–often referred to as tenacity or “grit”–may actually be the result of an unhealthy, and often counterproductive need to complete something. The extremely self-disciplined student might feel a strong need to continue on “even when it clearly doesn’t make sense to do so.”
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March 6th, 2009 by Robin Green
In Alfie Kohn’s article, “Why Self-Discipline is Overrated: The (Troubling) Theory and Practice of Control from Within,” he makes a strong case against the emphasis on self-discipline and self-control in LMS and classroom learning systems. After examining the personality types related to rigid self-discipline and the lack thereof, he arrives at a couple of paradoxes.
One is that though a student’s self-discipline in or outside a learning system may be seen as “an exercise of will, and therefore a free choice, many such people are actually not free at all, psychologically speaking.” The compulsion of self-discipline and neurosis are linked.
The second paradox, he goes on, is that impressive self-discipline can often contain the weapons of its own destruction: an explosive failure of control, which psychologists call “disinhibition.” We’ve all known straight-laced students who suddenly went wild in college. “From one unhealthy extreme,” Kohn writes, “people may suddenly find themselves at the other: The compliant student abruptly acts out in appalling fashion,[...] the pious teetotaler goes on a dangerous drinking binge,” and so forth.
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March 6th, 2009 by Robin Green
Published materials and discussions on the subject often assert that the promotion of self-discipline is an important goal for learning systems, ignoring research that suggests the issue isn’t so black and white.
Kohn writes, “Self-discipline can be less a sign of health than of vulnerability. It may reflect a fear of being overwhelmed by external forces, or by one’s own desires, that must be suppressed through continual effort. If effect, such individuals suffer from a fear of being out of control.”
Self-secure and healthy people are often not the most self-disciplined; they can be playful, flexible, and unafraid of new experiences and self-discovery. They may feel satisfied with processes rather than focusing on the end product. An extremely self-disciplined student, on the other hand, may see completing LMS homework or reading as purely a means to the end of a high test score or grade.
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March 5th, 2009 by Robin Green
What does it say about our society and its learning systems, poses Kohn, if the idea of self-control is widely applauded even though it may sometimes be inflexible, limiting, and “spoil the experience and savorings of life”?
It’s clear for many educators that any extreme in behavior is generally undesirable in a learning system. Too little self-control is as undesirable as too much. But even though we may tell ourselves this intellectually, in the classroom this may be forgotten as undercontrolled egos run wild.
As Alfie Kohn points out, a reluctance to acknowledge the negative effects of both extremes is prevalent in our learning systems.
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March 5th, 2009 by Robin Green
In Alfie Kohn’s article, “Why Self-Discipline is Overrated: The (Troubling) Theory and Practice of Control from Within,” he examines our attitudes about self-discipline in learning systems. He cites research psychologist Jack Block, who described people in terms of their degree of “ego control,” or the extent to which impulses and emotions are expressed or suppressed.
According to Block’s research, people whose impulses and feelings are undercontrolled are “impulsive and distractible,” while those who are overcontrolled are “compulsive and joyless.” The fact that educators are generally more irritated by the former, defining it as a problem for students in a learning system, doesn’t make the latter any less disquieting.
It’s not only that self-control isn’t always preferable, but that a lack of self-control isn’t always bad because it can “provide the basis for spontaneity, flexibility, expressions of interpersonal warmth, openness to experience, and creative recognitions.”
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