Benefits of Genius Mentality

Another great book next to "Dumbing Us Down" about a teacher who triumphs in the school system is "Teach Like Your Hair is on Fire" by Esquith (which is a really interesting listen to on audio as I believe the author is the one that narrated the one I listened to.) He brings up how one of his goals is to change how the kids motivate themselves to do things by teaching them what he calls the six orientations of motivation: 1) (Lowest) Obedience/Punishment orientation: How can I avoid punishment? 2) Self-interest orientation: What's in it for me? 3) Interpersonal/Conformity orientation: How does this make me look? 4) Authority/Social Order orientation: Law and order, what are the rules? 5) Social Contract orientation: What is my duty? 6) Universal Ethical orientation: ...because it is right. He treated them in the orientation he wanted them to respond in, and they rose to it! After being reminded of these 6 levels through reading "Dumbing Us Down" and of course Gatto's words himself, I was primed to deal with a situation in our family in a new and better way. My husband and I have been concerned with how late our kids go to bed. Our concern was also the "collateral" damage of agency: the younger kids being up past their bedtimes because of rambunctious older ones in our relatively small house (3 bedrooms, 10 kids...makes things interesting!). We also had impressionable transition to youth kids who tended to stay up just because their older siblings were. We decided to address it through family council rather than scholar contract (which in hindsight may have been better) and we initially came up with a system that became riddled with rules, battles of interpretation, and quibbling with semantics. I hate rules for this reason. When we came back together to "evaluate" (renegotiate), my husband proposed a plan to throw the old system out for a while but if people didn't govern themselves well, reinstate our recent rule set-up. The tenor of his suggestion went against what I had been studying in this course, which is that people will want to govern themselves when taught correct principles (and shown them by their parents, which we haven't been doing very well with in light of our 1 month old youngest :S). I suggested that rather than phrase our "new policy" that way, instead we say, "Let's set aside the rules, reconsider the principles, and trust that the young adults will naturally want to succeed, want to be healthy, and will figure out a way to do it." Inspire, not require, right? And no threats :). I was so impressed with the kids! After we had the conversation that changed the tenor of our discussion from "threats" to "expectations of responsibility and genius," they all went to bed by 9 pm that night!! And it hasn't been a battle since! I am so grateful for the timing of this course...of course, it might have been helpful in similar situations over the years, but it was wonderful to see the principles work in action. Genius mentality does not come naturally to me in action, unfortunately :). Another interesting companion read is "Punished By Rewards" by Alfie Kohn, which is a little extreme but has similar ideas.