01 March 2009

Thinking Outside the Box.

Joe wrote a post by that title, and doesn't it just fit? We need to quit putting kids into boxes quite so literally. If you're at all interested in the history of the time-out room (aka locked closet in my lingo or "safe" room in teacherese), you should click over and take a look. A short excerpt:

"For too many years, in too many places, children who have occasional outbursts in schools have been seen as disruptions, nuisances, drains on resources, undisciplined, bad, and generally problems to be controlled. And the tools that have been most often resorted to to remedy the situation have been the ones seen to be most expedient-the use of restraints and seclusion rooms."

3 comments:

  1. Pamela has developed her own cure for tantrums. I'm going to blog this later, but she hit her funny bone yesterday and it hurt. She started to get angry about it and then thought of the Chinese lady who freaked out at the Hong Kong airport (courtesy of You Tube). She giggled and told me, "The Chinese lady . . ."

    It is too bad those school administrators do not have the creativity of my daughter!

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  2. I really felt for that lady in the video. Since I don't get the language I imagine all kinds of horrible things happening to her family if she didn't make the flight. Of couse, it could just be a simple temper tantrum too LOL!

    And your daughter seems like she'd be a lot of work to direct during the day, but very good company as well.

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  3. Your comment about "putting kids into boxes" reminded me about B.F. Skinner's box. He actually did raise his daughter in a box for a period of time. Have you heard about that?

    Paloma Pentarian

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Non-troll comments always welcome! :)

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