A Sleeping Giant

The blog Lunatic Laboratories has an great summary of an interesting paper in The Journal of Child Maltreatment titled, "Self-Criticism as a Mechanism Linking Childhood Maltreatment and Maternal Efficacy Beliefs in Low-Income Mothers With and Without Depression".

The study found that mothers who experienced more types of abuse as children–sexual abuse, physical or emotional abuse, and physical or emotional neglect–have higher levels of self-criticism, and therefore greater doubt in their ability to be effective parents....
Prior research has found that a mother’s confidence is closely linked to her motivation to use positive child-rearing strategies.

My comments on the blog are as follows:

I provide ABA services to many low-income mothers who might be described well by this article. However, (and if you're familiar with the radical behaviorist perspective, you'll know this) we don't go in for such mentalistic talk of "sense of self-efficacy".  Not to say we wouldn't agree with the basic premise.  But try this: mom's history of reinforcement hasn't taught her the requisite skills.  The difference between those who are able to implement correct strategies in stressful situations versus those who aren't won't be doing so because they "feel more self-efficacious", but rather that they have simply attained fluency.  I.e. they have practiced and learned these skills so that they can use them despite difficult setting events.  For instance, if I have a headache (or worrying about the bills, my boss, the broken car, etc.), playing a piano song will be more difficult.  But if I am fluent, I will be able to engage in the behavior.

An absolute failure of society right now is adequate delivery of treatment services to mothers in need such as these.  In California, if your child has an autism diagnosis, health insurance companies are mandated to cover behavioral services.  Based on need, these can range from 8-15 hours per week.  The amount of progress children make is nothing short of astounding.  Kids learn to speak, to communicate their desires, to label items and hold conversations.  However, much of our work is also in parent training. 

Where this becomes interesting is in multi-child households where parent-child interactions are often dysfunctional, i.e. maladaptive behaviors are reinforced and appropriate behaviors are punished.  I am not paid to provide services for the rest of the family, but a great benefit of our services is that the same strategies parents learn to use with their special-needs children are those they should be using with their other children.

We've made great progress in the U.S. when it comes to those with disabilities.  However, when the disorder is not genetic but the result of a learning history, our sense of moral responsibility, let alone socio-economic pragmatism (well-functioning families are more productive in every way - for generations!) withers.  I see two important roadblocks to overcoming this: first, it is a common belief that lower-SES people have only themselves to blame, and thus can only help themselves; and second, we lack a coherent, comprehensive understanding of what is truly causing poverty.

The science of behaviorism is deterministic and believes all thought is behavior, and that all behavior is a product of operant mechanisms.  As such, it's answer to the former roadblock is that SES is merely a function of social history and structural formations.  Just as you would not blame a town for being flooded by a river and would instead try and help them recover, so too would you the individual.  We do this with disabilities, why not learned behavior? 

That question leads to the second, greater roadblock: the philosophical, political reaction so many have to the radical behaviorist hypothesis.  The history of behaviorism's place in psychology is illustrative: it's marginalization in the fifties and sixties after Chomsky, it's quiet growth into ABA in the seventies and its refinement in the eighties, it's establishment as the pre-eminent treatment the nineties and oughts for autism and behavioral disorders.  It took decades of tireless work and empirical results to barely make a dent in public and academic acceptance.  However, it remains poorly understood, even as its principles remain as true and central to the human condition today as they were when Skinner published Verbal Behavior in 1957.  

I would argue that the reason for this is simple: a deep human bias towards the notion that we have free will, that we are not determined, that "we" are somehow special, possessive of some mysterious, supernatural "consciousness" from which we make all of our choices.  When confronted with evidence to the contrary, many experience a deep revulsion at the mere thought, a sort of existential terror.  What, many will reply, is the point of anything at all then!  

The roots of this (reinforced) notion can be found in various forms of cultural imbibement: religion, philosophy, politics, art.  To one swayed by this mythological cacophony, to accept the radical behaviorist premise is something akin to death.  And as we have seen time and time again, when empiricism and parsimony comes up against the forces of belief in legion, it often only emboldens its enemy. 

And behaviorism is not a simple concept.  I spend very little time with families explaining the deeper processes at work (the discriminative stimuli, the matching law, schedules of reinforcement).  I give them what is necessary and show them how to use the tools of behavior change.  For some, it is rather simple.  For others, it goes against everything they would consider "common sense".  But you can't argue with results.

In many areas of the political arena, change has come kicking and screaming, after results were plain as day.  Laws were passed that people were uncomfortable with at first, but then one day would question how they could ever have been otherwise.  

Unfortunately, things like racial civil rights and rights for people with disabilities don't necessarily clash with larger mythological forces anything like that of the notion of "free will".  But how about the right to a learning history of behavioral cusps, that maximizes one's ability to access to reinforcement?  Or the right to having a deficit in learning history be remedied?  In colloquial language we call these things public education, or jobs programs.  But the underlying premise if flimsy: only a basic education, only for kids, because kids don't really have free will yet (and even then, we'll basically ignore the vastly different levels of learning histories and social capital different kids have).  Jobs programs if you're lucky, because maybe it wasn't really your fault you don't have the right skills.  Maybe.

These two pitiful solutions are vague compromises made by a larger population that mostly believes that people are responsible for their own decisions.  To the extent they are provided, it is out of an intuitive sense that there isn't something quite right about massive poverty,and therefore charity is a moral duty.  

Yet the problem persists.  And so mythologies are heaped upon mythologies.  The remaining poor - even after public schools, welfare, jobs programs (and now free healthcare!) are seen by one side of the political spectrum as simply making bad choices.  Why?  Who knows!  By the other side, they are largely seen as helpless victims of racist cops and lazy schoolteachers.  Both take as a baseline notion the idea of free will and personal responsibility.  But one side sees it as all the individual's fault, with a perfectly functioning system, the other as no fault of the individual, but rather an imperfect system which does not allow even a perfectly functioning individual to succeed.  

But to the behaviorist, all can be explained by looking at individual histories.  Indeed, the system is imperfect and broken, and has been for centuries, and as a result, learning histories have been repeatedly left to become mangled and neglected over generations.  The environment and the individual cannot be separated.  Every aspect of one's life, every stimulus that one experiences in the course of the day, every schedule of reinforcement or punishment upon which one is placed, actively shapes one's behavior.  

From this perspective, blame is irrelevant, meaningless.  All that matters is intervention.  With this in mind, social policy can actually begin to apply the necessary mechanisms.  I see on a daily basis the effectiveness of ABA in the lives of children with behavioral disorders.  The treatment is a result of decades of science being accepted and applied by a social infrastructure that recognizes not only its efficacy but feels an obligation put it into action.

Humanity is behavior.  Behavior shapes humanity.  I believe one day we will live in a world in which each citizen has a right to a meaningful learning history.  And if that learning history is disrupted by accident, just like any illness, they will have a right to treatment by a qualified, trained professional.   No one will be left to "make their own choices", because the concept will no longer make sense.  Certain parameters of acceptable behavior will be allowed, and considered "freedom", as they are now.  And others won't.  But criminals won't get "justice" anymore than successful business-people will: both will be seen, correctly, as products of their learning histories.  

And women like the ones in this article won't need to exist.  Their sense of "efficacy" will not be seen as residing in them, but in all of us.

Parenting as Nihilism

The Thorny Path, Thomas Couture (1873)

This morning I stumbled across a real piece of work at the Awl by Amy Sohn, author of Run Catch Kiss, described thusly by Amazon:

"....a novel that will appeal to a very specific audience--fans of Amy Sohn; young college graduates who'd like to imagine it's really this easy to achieve notoriety in a city like New York; and readers who enjoy lots of name-dropping, club-hopping, and frank descriptions of sex and other bodily functions. Sohn includes several of Ariel's columns ("Stench of a Woman," for example, or "Smutlife") as well as the letters she gets in response. In between, Ariel and her cronies and assorted one-night stands hang out in places with names like BarF and BarBarella, and drop pop references to Gen-X movies and music. Sohn delivers it all up with moxie, making up for the novel's literary weaknesses by sheer full-frontal outrageousness."

Her new novel, Motherland, continues the rally.  Those reaching for the vomit bag will relate to Jen Doll's take-down at the Atlantic, responding to Sohn's labeling of her and her friends as "Regressives".

"Only last week, let's say, I went out and drank so much wine that the next day I might have regretted certain behaviors, or even forgotten them completely, only to regret them anew when I was reminded of them by others. Does that mean I am trapped in my teen years, or maybe my booze-guzzling twenties? Does it mean I have...regressed? 
What if, when I reach the age of nearly 40 and have children, if this happens to happen, I decide to go out on the town regularly, sowing my still-wild oats, with a bunch of other moms in a clique we give the name "Hookers, Sluts and Drug Addicts"? Does that mean I'm spiraling out of Benjamin-Button control...or just kind of an immature self-absorbed jerk who, maybe, has always been that way?"

I couldn't agree more.  Indeed, her cohort reminds Sohn herself of craven teenagers.

"My generation of moms isn’t getting shocking HPV news (we’re so old we’ve cleared it), or having anal sex with near-strangers, or smoking crack in Bushwick. But we’re masturbating excessively, cheating on good people, doing coke in newly price-inflated townhouses, and sexting compulsively—though rarely with our partners. Our children now school-aged, our marriages entering their second decade, we are avoiding the big questions—Should I quit my job? Have another child? Divorce?—by behaving like a bunch of crazy twentysomething hipsters. Call us the Regressives."

Being a good person is hard.  Being kind, self-less, caring, etc. requires reflection, listening, and sacrifice.  Assuming any of what Sohn describes is true (and anyone who has watched more than a few hours of reality TV will know that such depravedly inclined individuals indeed exist - what seems new is that you wouldn't expect to find them among the liberal arts crowd at Brooklyn co-ops), listening to tales of these relatively privileged anti-superwomen wallow in pathos and nihilistic hedonism at the expense of their children, and a surrounding society that could use less of their self-indulgence and more of their positive contributions, is a slap in the face to those of us who take seriously the notion that we have a duty and responsibility to give more back to society than we take away.

Yet in the end, the issue is one of consciousness, as these troubled souls seem to have lost their way and are still stumbling around the psychological halls of high school, somehow never having developed a spiritual wisdom that might allow them to transcend the bonds of a limited, narcissistic worldview.  As is true of decadence everywhere, this is the stuff of structural privilege in which norms can develop within a vacuum of moral consequence.  What has seemingly been removed are the mechanisms that ordinarily enforce positive social, community and personal values.

I suppose the rest of us can count our good fortune that more of the world doesn't look like Sohn's book.  At least not as far as I can tell.  And the world she describes is likely not as interesting as she would have us believe.  Like any reality show, editing is everything.  And like a roadside tragedy, people will want to watch, even fewer participate.   I think I'll pass.

The Parent-Gap

"The First Family", Jean-Marie-François-Xavier, 1864

The basic assumption underlying modern education reform is that teachers can make every student successful.  Anything less is the "soft bigotry of low expectations".  The obvious implication is that if you are teaching children who are not successful, then you at best have low-expectations, at worst are bigoted.  Well, OK maybe you just plain suck.

Unfortunately, this is a bunch of hooey.  No matter how high your standards, not all children will be successful.  Amazing teachers will do amazing things, but I call this the "Rambo Teacher Fallacy".  Just because some teachers are able to help more of their kids succeed, against all odds, it doesn't mean that all - or even most - will be able to.  Just like you wouldn't expect all your soldiers to be little Rambos, so to with education.

So why is this?  Why can't teachers simply do their job and have every child succeed?

Because we live in the real world.  I know that sounds trite, but here goes.  Generational poverty and property values pool citizens in ghettos.  Those in society most lacking in knowledge of how to be successful in life, and the resources to do it, are pooled together in neighborhoods.  Add in crime, drugs, failed marriages and a toxic, dystopian brew develops that can drive any kid straight into disobedience and hostility towards an authority he sees no reason to believe in.

I asked one of my students today why he felt his life was so terrible.  He told me he couldn't trust anyone.  Even his parents?  Especially them, he said.  "They kicked me out!"  I told him he must have done something to provoke them.  He admitted that he had gotten into a fight with his father and punched him in the face.  I hear stories like this over and over.  Sex, fights and drugs - lots of drugs.  The parents don't know what to do.

But let's back up a bit.  (We could go forward too, as many of them have already either fathered or given birth to their own children.  But let's keep things simpler.)  The disadvantage starts at birth, with socio-economic factors putting children at risk in numerous ways.  This blog has detailed many of them.  But suffice it to say that kids are coming into the education system severely handicapped.  This of course handicaps the educator, for whom it is often the best they can do to help the child simply be less unsuccessful.  There is only so much one teacher can do in a classroom of kids who need serious intervention. 

So what we're talking about here is a deceptively simple word: parenting.  One is reminded of Nanny 911, the reality television series that ran a few years back in which a professional nanny was brought in to cure a family's rotten kids.  The irony of course was always that in the end the real problem was with the parents, who were failing to provide clear boundaries, set expectations, be consistent, etc. with their children.  The parents always wanted what was best for their children, yet were at wit's end trying to understand how to achieve it.  It's easy to point a finger and say well, you should be doing this, or that.  But to the parents it wasn't.  And no, parenting doesn't come with an instruction manual.  A mother-in-law maybe, and those evil strangers who mistakenly think they have any business offering their advice.

But parenting it is.  And the strangest thing about the contemporary conversation on education is that parenting rarely comes into it.  Either parents are perfect angels whose children are victims of a dysfunctional system corrupted by lazy teachers and their unions, or parents may be complete monsters but there is "no excuse" and the only thing these kids need is "good teaching" and high-standards.

But parents aren't angels.  Poor children often come from homes with a lot of problems.  And while the parents are doing their best, their children are getting a lousy upbringing.  To deny this is to deny our collective responsibility in intervening and lending a helping hand to our fellow citizens.

And teachers can't make all these kids be successful.  A few might, under the right circumstances, with the right staff and leadership and support, and extra hours worked, extra yoga and meditation exercises, etc.  But the current model is like trying to catch lightning in a bottle.  It is fundamentally ill-equipped to do the type of massive socio-economic restructuring required.

I have not seen the film Waiting for Superman.  And therefore I know I should not speak of it.  But it is such a distillation of the current thinking in education reform, and so successful in driving the discussion, (and literally drove donations to my specific class project funding request on donorschoose.org, which just bought my classroom a new LCD projector!).  But I can't watch that movie.  I've listened to the debates, watched the promos, followed the director's publicity.  But I just can't watch that movie.  I'm sorry for the dirty reference, but I feel like it would be like asking a Jew to see the new Leni Riefenstahl flick.  Or sitting through an hour of Glenn Beck.  There are only certain lengths to which one can go in life.

Fortunately Lanna Garon, a New York public school teacher went for me, and wrote about it in the Huffington Post.  She says it:

purport[s] to investigate the reasons for the failing American school system, but in fact ignore all social or economic factors but one: bad teachers. Furthermore, they tout charter schools as the holy grail of education reform, completely glossing over the fact that the vast majority of charter schools are not only no more successful (and in some cases less so) than their public counter-parts, but have at their disposal both more funding and a more active/supportive parent base.

 She goes on to explain the one big thing the film left out.  That's right, parenting.  In excruciating detail, she goes about explaining what exactly school teachers in poor schools are faced with from incompetent parents.  From their lack of presentation at parent-teacher conferences or back-to-school nights, lack of consequences for their children's behavior, failure to bring children to school on time or make sure they are adequately prepared for class, or - in the worst cases - to actively support their children's violent behavior.

Last spring, the principal of our school brought in 30 sets of parents to discuss a rash of fights in our corridors. She was told by several of the parents that the students SHOULD be fighting it out on school grounds, because then it's a "controlled environment" wherein security can break up the fight, as opposed to if it were to take place unsupervised off-campus. (No recognition of the fact that these fights waste students' and teachers' time, distracting everyone from learning, as well as the inherent problems of school violence.) We eventually found out that some of the parents had actually been driving their children around the neighborhood to beat up their rivals, even after pledging to work with the school to put an end to the conflict.

I had a student tell me this morning about the time she and her father drove out looking for the security guard who she felt had "disrespected" her, so as to exact justice.

Garon doesn't say any of this with any seeming glee or accusatory tone, as far as I can tell.  As a teacher of similar populations I can relate to everything she says.  And I know that these parents are all struggling with their own battles as well.  I can only imagine Garon feels the same.  I don't expect parents to behave any better.  I understand that there are very serious structural reasons as to why they do not. It is not a simple "choice".  My job is an educator is to take their children in and do my very best to educate and love them as best I can before they leave at the end of the day.

But I can't do it alone.  Very few teachers can.  And the longer we continue to ignore the real problems plaguing the broken corners of society, sweeping them under the rug of "teacher reform" and union-busting, they will only fester.  I don't know what all the answers are.  And asking me to have them all solved by 3pm every day when the bell rings is a bit God-damned too much.  When the children exit the building, off to who-knows-what, who-knows-why or who-knows-how, they are for all intents and purposes lost and forgotten.  At least until they show up at my door at 8am the next day.

I don't want to interfere into anyone's life.  I'd love to think that all parents can do right by their children.  But many can't.  And that's a problem for the rest of us - Lord knows it is one for them.  Not least the children themselves.  So when we look to leave not one child behind, let us look as well to the parents.  As a wise former principal of mine once illustrated with a powerpoint slide, a child's education is a triangle between the teacher, the school and the parent.  Leave one out and the whole system collapses.

Films like Superman can glorify the charters that take in the families fleeing the despair of the ghetto in which they live.  But more of a concern to me is the families left behind, whose parents never sign up for the lottery in the first place, and who seem to make their child's education a low priority.  These are the parents whose children are making our classrooms unbearable, whose children are taking up everyone's time because their problems are too big for one teacher to solve alone.