Does your state do vision and hearing screening in schools? I’m nearsighted, and I remember it was around 8th grade that it started.
Depression is another problem that often starts around this age. Some possible signs of depression in teens.
Damn right. And they should also learn to find an activity which isn’t boring - which is a useful skill to acquire, especially if you are going to grow up to attend lots of meetings.
What bugs me are parents who use the “he is too smart for the class, and is getting bad grades because he is bored” excuse. I was involved with the GATE parent support group of our district for many years, and never heard this problem once from the parents of students who were GATE identified. I think kids learn to use the bored card to push their deficiencies off on their teachers and “the system.” I don’t remember being bored once in school - at times I listened to my algebra teacher with half my mind while I played with number with the other half.
I was bored outta my mind in school. I learned to multitask. I would take Stephen King novels with me to class and read them. Right in front of the teacher. And listen with one ear. The teachers would try to make a point and fire off questions at me, but when they realized that A) I was acing the homework and turning it all in on time B) I was acing the exams and C) Could answer this ‘gotcha’ questions in as much a rapid-fire manner as delivered… they pretty much left me alone and let me read. I was mastering the material pretty much the minute it was presented to me.
Sometimes I took my newspaper layouts to classes and did my paste up while I was listening to the lecture on US History or whatever. Or I’d do my geometry homework while sitting in chemistry class. As long as I could keep up with what was going on in the present, my teachers gave me no shit about doing other stuff in their classes.
I think you’re partly right, but not entirely. “He’s too smart and is bored” isn’t necessarily untrue per se, but it’s never the complete picture. And, of course, I don’t buy the argument that anyone is “too smart” for a class they’re doing poorly in–capable of much, much more, yes, already knows the material, yes. But if you’re so damn smart and are able to do much more complex material, or you already know the material, the required work shouldn’t take you any time at all. There’s no reason you can’t rip through that and spend the rest of the time reading a book or writing or drawing or working out the kinks in your plan for world domination if pure brain power is the only issue at play.
Of course, pure brain power is never the only issue at play in anything, including success or failure at school. Take me and my brother. We’re roughly as intelligent as each other, but my grades were always better than his and I consistently tested into the GATE programs and he never did. What was up with that? Well, I was like you and he…well, he was the textbook untreated ADD kid. Very intelligent, but without the necessary psychological resources/tools necessary to force himself to focus very well on stuff he wasn’t interested in or to do two things at once. Yes, he was smarter than the rest of the class and was bored, but that was emphatically NOT the reason he got mostly B’s and the occasional C instead of straight A’s. The reason was a combination of him being unable to cope with his boredom in a way compatible with success, and him being more than a touch lazy and stubborn and thus unwilling to do stuff if he didn’t see the point in it.
Another thing I learned is that a fair number of GATE identified students drop out of school. Yes, there are often substantial issues. The “bored” part is the only part I doubt. I can certainly imagine a GATE kid without good parental supervision getting so hung up on something that normal schoolwork gets neglected.
Our op seems to be unavailable to answer questions regarding the specific circumstances, so I don’t feel too bad about continuing a hijack …
Categorically rewards and punishments do not work? Wow. Quite a statement. Pyper and Hello Again have already provided a tiny sample of studies that show that rewards and punishments do indeed work when designed correctly. I will add in this and this and this one that is worth quoting:
And of course there is the reward that most of us know on a regular basis: most of us work, whether or not we love our job for its own sake, and many I would guess would not do so if it was not for the reward of our pay (or alternatively put, the risk of punishment of losing the pay and all that such would entail). The studies are nice but your own experience really should be all the proof you need.
No doubt rewards and punishments can be set up poorly. As noted the behavior must be something that the subject feels they have control over and that they understand how to accomplish. Timing and frequency of rewards also matter and what is optimal is different at different phases of training. Bonuses at work tied to events that I at least believe are outside of my control, or that I do not have the knowledge of how to control, or that I perceive are capricious, would be counterproductive more often than not.
It is in this context that the statement that triggered this hijack matters - the suggestion was that a reward (happened to be money but could be any reinforcer) should be tied to smaller achievable bits of the process, bits that the student understands how to do and feels they have control over, rather than grades at the end of the semester. Grades are too far off. They may fail to occur even with solid effort and habits and are subject to events outside the student’s control. More immediate and more controllable behaviors must be targets for the system to work well. Things like being in class, showing tangible proof of studying an agreed upon amount of time (such as completed homework), documentation that all assigned homework was completed, producing an outline breaking down a longer term project into doable smaller parts with a dateline of when those parts will be done, and then for doing each of those parts according to that timeline, etc. Money can be a token. So can points that are redeemed for privileges and treats.
**jebert **–what do you think?
once again getting paid for your work is not a reward, it is a straight up profit share, you get paid for your contributions to the company. the fact that people still use this as an example mystifies me. but lets take things back a few thousand years. would you say that eating your share of the hunt in a hunter gatherer society is a “reward”? hardly it what keeps us from dying.
of the studies linked I could only find one that involved a control group and a decent sample size, a study of 2 kids with no control group? seriously?
and in the classroom study there is one glaring factor that is missing, the LONG term effects. no-one is denying that rewards and punishments work in the here and now. the question is are you really changing the behavior in question over the long haul. the research Khon has pulled together does follow up after time has passed and pretty much every time shows a decrease in interest in the very behavior that the rewards were supposed to be driving up.
I really don’t know much about conditioning but if you can’t see that getting paid for working is a reward then you know even less than me.
Yes, eating your share of the caribou is a reward. A reward is any positive reinforcer that follows an action. An “A” on a test is a reward. Your mom saying “good job” is a reward. A mere sound can be a a reward, if you’ve been conditioned to associate the sound with a reward (such as the bell signifying the end of a class and the start of recess).
A reward isn’t a prize bestowed by a beneficient deity. A reward is simply a positive stimulus, ie, something you want, that you can expect to receive by taking some action.
You have a deep lack of understanding of behaviorism. Yes, getting paid is a reward. Yes, food is a reward. Anything that increases the likelihood that you will perform a behavior in the future is a reward (the better term is reinforcement).
Studies done in behaviorism are known as single case designs, and they never involve controls and rarely involve more than a few subjects. The scientific validity comes from replication of conditions. In the most simplified form, you measure the behavior, implement the treatment and measure again, take away the treatment and measure again, implement and measure again, etc. If you can demonstrate that the behavior changes from condition to condition, you have demonstrated that your intervention is valid. If you don’t already know this (or weren’t able to recognize it after reading the articles), then you really don’t have a place in criticizing behaviorism.
Most case designs have a follow-up phase, where the behavior is again measured after several months of no treatment. If the behavior shows that it has reverted to baseline, the treatment was not effective, and I doubt you’ll find that is the case in published articles. The first article I posted (which you clearly did not read) addresses your very point: that token systems are not effective when they are removed. The study shows that with proper fading of the system, the behavior maintained at followup.
Edited to add: Upon reading the first study again, I noticed that it is a direct rebuttal to Kohn! They reference him as the source of criticisms of token systems.
I have no desire to pile up on you but I wonder - how do you define “a reward” (as noted, better phrased as “a reinforcer”)?
And while it is a hijack of a hijack, do you really think that workers are paid as a “a straight up profit share” in accordance to their “contributions to the company”? Really?
I have to disagree with this. Children, with the right motivators, can find intrinsic interest in damn near anything. If you have seen your children “bored by Disney World, a house full of video games” etc., that boredom was purely and simply calculated manipulation. If a kid is expressing boredom in a house full of activities, games, etc., the proper response is to say, “Don’t tell me you’re bored/don’t sit around doing nothing/ don’t express boredom to me, go outside and find something to do”. They’ll do it. (I’ll leave education aspect out of this for now)
I don’t do much handwringing over children who are always “bored”; without an adult to worry and fret whether or not they are properly entertained, they are naturally very resourceful and very very capable of entertaining themselves. With an adult around who makes it a point to have every available entertainment around just in case they get “bored”, there will be a lot of calculation to make sure the adult jumps through the right hoops to buy a constant supply of new gadgets.
Its always fascinating when people who don’t know my kids can - from the internet - tell me when its “manipulation” and believe I spend my time entertaining my children. I can assure you, between the Dope, work, and World of Warcraft, my kids need to entertain themselves. Oh, and we don’t have TV in the traditional sense. SOME kids can find interest in anything. SOME kids are eternally bored by everything. Most get bored pretty frequently.
so according to this I should be able to hire someone to do my job, start out paying them well and if I play my cards right after a few months or so I should end up with a pay check and a personal slave who loves their job?
I would be fascinated to learn why this isnt standard procedure for companies everywhere.
or not actually, but I will keep on studying.
When we talking about fading, we mean transferring unnatural reinforcement (such as tokens) to natural reinforcement that will occur in the child’s everyday environment (such as positive social attention from teachers and parents). For an adult, a paycheck is natural reinforcement. Positive social attention from colleagues, enjoyment of a job, etc. are also natural reinforcement, but not strong enough reinforcement for most people to work 40 hours a week.
[hijack of the hijack]
But, interesting enough, it may be. I’ve had several friends now, in the current economic nightmare, who have been laid off but still help out at their former employers while looking for other work because they receive or received enough non-monetary rewards to maintain loyalty and friendship. Of course, they’re all hoping that if they just stick it out for a few months of no pay, things will turn around and bossman will rehire them for pay.
[/hoth]
Yes, I didn’t mention it, but of course there are many people who work for free because they find the work itself rewarding, i.e. volunteers. I know that if I were privately wealthy, I would continue to do my job anyway (although maybe not 40 hours a week).