When I was a child, having been brought up in a strictly Asian household, the importance was placed highly on scholarly achievement, and values centered around hard work and being conscientious with money. To drive this point, my parents have consistently had these in mind when implementing household rules that we, their children, had to adhere to despite repeated protests.
In order to be a good and responsible student, my mother would tutor us every night, going over our assignments and notebooks to make sure that were studiously taking down notes and participating in class. Our things need to be accounted for. ALWAYS. We had two pencils and one eraser and sharpener. When we get home from school, this has to remain as such, two pencils, one eraser and a sharpener. We can never lose these because we can’t ask for new ones as these were the assigned materials to us for the year.
Growing a little bit older, our predicament with the pencils became the said predicament with our pens. So much so that it became so ridiculous (in our eyes) that we would start randomly asking for the pens of our classmates so that we could have more than just two. We had a main pen and a spare. When one of those pens completely loses their ink, we turn them in so that my mom could replace us with a new one. If we drop the pen and the pen stops working (but there’s still some ink left—you can see it through the transparent casing of the pen), we would turn them over for repair. My mom would use a lighter and light the very tip to melt the stuck ink and force it to write again. We never got out of this cycle.
As for allowances, we didn’t have an allowance because we could bring whatever food we want from home. To encourage a thrifty nature and to understand the value of money, we would have 1 peso a day as an allowance (that’s 0.02 USD), which we would only be able to collect at the end of the school year. No, we did not have 365 pesos because we didn’t have 365 school days. You will have to subtract summer, holidays, and all the weekends, which was why you need to have an organized planner listing down all the dates that were school reporting days.
To encourage us doing well in school, my mom devised a way to positively reinforce scholarly achievement: getting perfect scores. For every 10/10 quiz, activity, or perfect test, we would get another peso. At this point, my dad wanted to be more lenient as he did not believe that a 9/10 and the effort of performing well shouldn’t be just as rewarded as getting the perfect score. The rule was still implemented however, and we would present these perfectly scored papers like a medal just to get a peso. If I have 5 of these perfect scores, I would be able to buy myself an iced-treat from the canteen.
But the rewarding schedule changed. My dad would sometimes clear out his desk from coins when I presented him with a perfect score. It didn’t matter what subject it was in. If it was as easy as spelling or as hard as a math quiz, a perfect score rewarded me with all the coins from his desk! Sometimes even amounting to 50 pesos! That already bought me flavored fries and ice cream!
At this point, I was even more motivated, but I have learned to watch out for that desk. I showed the perfect score to my mom, and on a separate occasion to my dad. This way I earned a peso from mom and whatever number of coins my dad had on the table—and I made sure to only show my paper to him when I could see many coins on his table. What a way to beat the variable ratio system!
Thinking about this in a teacher’s value-centered perspective would make us rethink these stringent systems. My mom enforced this with good intentions, but I as a curious and ingenious kid had found other ways to break the system and benefit myself. Soon, I was not only profiting from showing the same paper to two parents who would reward me separately, but as studies got harder and harder, I was more and more desperate to get those coins even if I didn’t deserve them. I would keep the papers and show them again when I would wager that they might have forgotten about them already.
This is the main difference of humans with animals. Animals can’t behave out of their natural instinct, whereas, we humans could and most probably would if the benefits are high.
Eventually, I learned how to make fake quizzes and check them with a red pen. I earned more and more but I wasn’t really achieving in school. In the end, I got caught and got punished for it—by the good ‘ol kneeling in beans while having books on top of my head.
But the lesson is this, sometimes we carefully plan out how to manipulate behavior, but however effective the law of effect might be, the learning theory of having multiple responses still comes to play. And sometimes, although we mean well, we might even push the child or the learner to do worse things that you could have imagined.
Don’t you worry though. Through Positive Punishment (although corporal punishment is in no means acceptable at present) I’ve learned my mistakes and went back to the direction of the values that my parents want to learn. On a positive note, I do now how to value money, and I never do lose my pens.
Professional Teaching Course 