A ‘Sweet’ Deal?

This week’s news reports that the headteacher of a school in Norfolk has promised the pupils of his school chocolate and sweets in exchange for good behaviour. To all intents and purposes his pledge has worked in achieving it’s goal, exclusion days at the school are down from 65 to 0 in year, these results seem to speak for themselves but what I ask is does the end justify the means? This issue has obviously raised some controversy, should the headteacher of a school be encouraging kids to wolf down chocolate and sweets? Critics argue that Dr Sheppard (the headteacher in question) is contributing to the childhood obesity crisis and bad teeth for the future; not to mention the inevitable cost of promising 240 kids chocolate on a daily basis. But for me this method of controlling bad behaviour raises a far more interesting question about the relative merits of this supposed ‘carrot’ instead of ‘stick’ approach to teaching.

People will say that in actual fact giving chocolate to kids in schools is a relatively small measure and if that’s what it takes to regulate behaviour in schools then so be it, especially if one is to believe the tabloid caricature of the modern teen-ager. If the choice is between a few porkers with bad teeth running around the school playing fields wheezing, or highly fit yobs wearing hoodies, listening to hip-hop at an anti-social volume and carrying knives; most people would take the chocolate idea. Of course reality is not quite the tabloid horror story you may believe and the truth is that, while a chocolate bar is probably not going to kill the kids what we need to worry about is the message we are sending out to a generation. In the short term, ‘crime rates’ in school may be down but are we setting these kids up with unreasonable expectations for later life?

I may only be 21 but my memory of school was that if you misbehaved you were punished with a detention during break time, maybe an after-school detention if your crime was more serious and for major infractions you could expect a suspension. This system while not being totally effective (if it were then no-one would offend) offered a deterrent against bad behaviour, there was conversely, a reward scheme for achievement, be it a special tie for excellence in sport or an award at the end of the year for academic achievement. Under the system in use in Redcastle Furze Primary kids are rewarded not for good behaviour but for avoiding bad behaviour. Now, apart from the obvious issues surrounding obesity and dental care the school are sending out a rather irresponsible message to the kids, that not being bad deserves some reward other than not being punished. Don’t get me wrong I am not proposing a draconian system of punishment where kids are ‘scared straight’ with use of the cane or a strategically placed beating; I am merely pointing out that in a society where increasingly we send out the message that one can be rich and famous not by working hard but by appearing on a reality TV show or being worthy of coverage in HEAT magazine, is it right to reward the bare minimum of effort in schools? If this system of rewards were to permeate into society we could potentially see people being rewarded for not being criminals by being entered into a prize draw with the potential to win some fabulous prize, like a holiday to the Seychelles (maybe the draw could be made on a Saturday night TV show hosted by Ant and Dec?) rather than being punished for their crimes. Okay, maybe I’m being a little melodramatic now but when we make decisions that are designed to improve a school’s standing in the league tables we have to consider the long term effects that these decisions bring about, we need to stop focusing on short term gain and consider what kind of a message we want to send to today’s children.