This is what happens when society teaches punishment instead of skills

A few weeks ago, I read the headlines of a story about a boys reform school in Florida. I passed by it, thinking nothing more than, "ho hum, just another sensational story." But I've been thinking about that school ever since. So did my own search instead of looking for that meme from somewhere in the depths of my Google+ feed, and here is what I found.

The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, aka, "The Florida School for Boys", was opened in 1900 and was notorious for a wide range of abuses of boys that were sent there or wound up there. The first link I found was from The Smithsonian Institution, not exactly the first name in sensationalism. So I read on. I was intrigued by the picture of the crosses in the graveyard at the school at the top of the article.

I read a few more articles and the literature is fairly consistent. Over a century of operation kids were severely beaten, whipped, denied clothing and food, one may have been shot and another was put in a large clothes dryer and died later from his injuries. Scientists have found 55 graves and have matched 14 DNA samples to identify the boys buried there. They found two graveyards one for people of color and one for everyone else. This Wikipedia article has a fairly detailed history of the school with numerous sources in the bibliography. Although no one seems to have been charged with a crime at the school, it was finally closed in 2011.

From my reading so far, I think it is fair to say that it was a public school teaching morality from religion. We know this from the crosses in the picture, and the segregation of the students based on race. The roots of American racism and segregation can be found in religion, Christianity to be precise.

This article is not intended to criticize religion in general, or even the brutal discipline practices at the Florida School for Boys. That has already been done. I believe that there is a wider and deeper message we can learn from this story. Those crosses in the picture are evidence of a fact that may now be plain for all to see: you cannot teach morality without teaching the skills required to achieve it.

Those crosses in the picture tell a story of a school staff intent on beating the "evil" out of the boys who were sent there by their parents or a state agency responsible for disposition of orphans. Those crosses are evidence of the failure of reward and punishment as a method of discipline. No matter how severe the discipline, there were always some boys who would not comply, even upon risk of death.

There is another story here to consider. The addiction of abuse. The abusers who administered the punishment were addicted to the abuse. When humans engage in physical conflict, the brain sends a massive shot of adrenaline throughout the body. For the abuser, this is a huge hit, every bit as powerful as cocaine or crystal meth. This hit provides a sort of "high" much like joggers experience with endorphins from the runners high, yet far more intense in the context of violence.

I have some first hand evidence of this myself. I felt it when I was spanked by my father as a boy. I felt it when I fought the kids who used to tease me at school. I felt it the moment before I hauled off a punch to the offender in the lunch line. I was always shaken by the experience of violence and can recall those same feelings with clarity to this day.

When we engage in violence of any kind, we feel this jolt of energy from the adrenaline. Combine that jolt with authority and you have a compelling reason to do it again. And again. Regardless of the consequences.

There is a better way to teach morality. We teach the skills needed to achieve that morality. One great example is the Boy Scouts of America and the Girl Scouts of America. The Scouts organizations teach skills. They both teach skills about living in and respecting the natural wilderness of America. They both teach skills about getting along, working as a team and collaborating.

For adults there are 12-step organizations, the most well known being Alcoholics Anonymous. They teach the skill of not drinking, they don't just pray for the willingness to stop drinking. They don't punish people for drinking, either. They understand, probably better than any other organization, the power and the peril of addiction. They are widely regarded as the most successful organization to help people stop drinking. And they're free. They're also anarchists. No one is forced to do anything in that program. Nothing is compulsory, there are no dues to pay, and it is an entirely voluntary organization. The 12 steps are suggested, not required.

There is even Toastmasters where people can learn to overcome fear of speaking in public. I was a member of Toastmasters for years and learned to ride that fear like a wave to turn it into an asset. They teach the skill of public speaking, and the skills required to overcome the fear of speaking in public.

I'm sure there are many more organizations out there that teach skills. The point is that when we teach the skills of morality we get better results. There is a scientific organization dedicated to this effort, Lives in the Balance, headed by Dr. Ross W. Greene, PhD. Dr. Greene has 38 years of working with kids and is applying a very simple concept to challenging behavior in kids and adults: kids would do better if they could.

According to Dr. Greene, when kids exhibit challenging behavior, that's the signal, not the problem. It is evidence of lagging skills and unsolved problems. When we work with kids to solve the problems that get in their way, we also teach them the skills they need to do well. Kids want to do well, naturally. It's up to us to engage with the kids in collaboration to solve those problems the prevent them from doing well. That means it's not entirely up to kids or the parents to solve the problems. It's a partnership.

I believe that this is true of adults, too. Crime is evidence of challenging behavior in adults. When we teach adults the skills they need to adapt to their conditions, they get better. Dr. Greene's approach is being applied to detention centers for kids with very positive results. We could do the same for adults.

By now you're wondering what this all has to do with politics. Donald Trump ran as a "law and order" candidate. He wants to crack down on crime. So do many Republicans in Congress and in statehouses. Republicans in 5 states are pushing to make peaceful protest a criminal offense.

Here's the problem: putting people in jail doesn't really address why they're in the streets. As we've learned from the Florida School for Boys, teaching morality with punishment is very difficult and perhaps a fatal exercise. Those crosses in the backyard of that school can serve as a warning that we need to change course for humanity.

Morality is a skill, not dogma

For the past few weeks, I've been watching "The Untold History of the United States", a documentary series on Netflix produced and narrated by Oliver Stone. As I saw this alternate history of the United States stream before my eyes, I found myself working hard to break it down to one simple idea. What I see is the United States caught in a war of morality. The United States is and has been for much of our history, waging a moral war against the world and many of its own citizens.

With each passing episode of Mr. Stone's version of our history, I found myself trying to put all that I have seen in context of what I know today. I have been trying to see all that history through a lens that says, "people would do better if they could". And throughout the history lessons presented by Mr. Stone, I could not help but think that these United States, acting as one, have been attempting to get the entire world to accept their notion of morality, without making any effort practice or to teach the skills required to achieve that morality.

The United States, and the people who claim to lead it, seem to think that people are bad because they want to be bad. So, when other people and other countries do not act in accordance with the moral code held by the United States, we have responded with furious, vindictive punishment. From the atom bombs we dropped on a country tired from war and ready to surrender, to a merciless war on terrorism perpetrated on countries that had nothing to do with 9/11, we have relied upon our power as justification for our morals rather than demonstrating that morality ourselves.

One cannot claim to teach morality without teaching the skills required to achieve that morality. Morality is not a question of motivation, morality is a skill. The skill of morality cannot be taught with a stick. Morality is a skill that must be demonstrated and taught with empathy and compassion through collaboration.

The United States has been trying for more than a century to convince us that capitalism has greater morality than socialism or communism. I have suggested in the past that it's not the form of government that matters so much as whether or not people treat each other with respect and compassion as a part of, and while living within the culture the government supports. The form of government we choose matters less than whether or not people are mature enough to treat each other with respect and kindness.

The leadership of the United States have been trying for more than a century to teach the world that Christianity is morally superior to any other religion, despite the fact that the United States was not even founded as a Christian nation. How have they been doing this? Mostly, through wars, military intervention and economic intervention. This hasn't been going well for America, either.

I am not saying that Christianity is a bad religion, rather, that there are a few people who claim to be Christian that are treating at least some other people very poorly. This continuum of good to bad behavior can be found in any group of people, in any religion. I've known as friends very moral atheists, Jews, Buddhists and Christians. But in its continual quest for dominance, the United States has not demonstrated the "Christian" morality that it seeks to impose upon others nor the compassion and empathy required to teach it.

This is not to say that we are a bad country, this is to say that if we want other nations to respect us, we must respect them. Just because we have the world's largest military force does not mean that others will respect us. That military force does not give us the right to topple other governments, to interfere with their economies and to foment wars in other countries. That kind of behavior breeds terrorism. 

How else can we explain the United States as the world's largest and greatest police state? How else can we explain the continual reliance upon a war time economy? To have peace, we must be peaceful. To teach peace, we must be peaceful, too. We must start that as a nation right now.

Great teachers are not worried about their security and they have no need to make war. They are entirely concerned with making sure their students learn the skills they sat in class for. Great teachers demonstrate the skills needed to live and prosper in peace, with compassion and empathy for their students. They do not punish their students for getting it wrong. Great teachers collaborate with their students. When a student goes astray, they attend to that student to determine what skills are missing and needed to learn the lesson and they teach those skills, verify that the skills have been learned and move on to the next lesson.

A great teacher is not concerned with motivation. He knows that the motivation is there. Even if the motivation appears absent, he knows it will appear when the skills are taught, learned and demonstrated by the student.

I can recall sitting in class as a child and a young man, and looking back, I now realize that the only real skills I was taught in school were reading, writing and arithmetic. They did not teach morality as a skill. They taught morality as a fact, as something to be accepted at face value without ever considering the skills required to achieve it. I now know for myself that morality comes from the chest and gut, not from a book.

The closest I think I ever came to learning life skills in school came when I took classes in home economics, auto shop, machine shop and electronics. The rest, history, social studies and even some science, were all about memorizing facts. They taught facts not skills. If they taught morality, they did not say they were teaching it. The morality they did teach was how bad socialism and communism were.

Our leaders continue to perpetuate the war on terror. They continue to allow frauds on an enormous scale to go uncorrected. With a real unemployment rate of 9.4%, they allow millions of Americans who want to work, to go wasted, with no job, no prospects, and no hope, while the wealthiest corporations in the world are allowed to park $2 trillion and more in tax shelters overseas. That's just the shortlist on my mind right now, and maybe yours, too.

This is not to say that our leaders are evil. I don't believe in evil and I'm not sure that I have ever believed in evil. The concept of evil is borne out of religion, a supernatural explanation for challenging behavior in children and adults. I do not believe in evil people. I believe that there are only the confused (who we call evil) and the less confused (the good). I think we can say with a fair amount of confidence that our leaders are really confused, both Democrats and Republicans, together.

Our leaders, intent upon teaching the morality of capitalism and Christianity, seem hopelessly lost because they are not teaching the skills required to achieve the morality they claim to possess. They seem more intent on pursuing money than morality. If our leaders do not possess the skill of morality, then it is up to us to teach those skills if we have them, and learn them if we don't. And when we teach those skills, we must be mindful to demonstrate the skill of morality ourselves, in and out of class, with empathy and compassion, through collaboration with everyone we meet.

Government isn't the problem - people are the problem - let's solve our problems together

I've been debating in Google+ again. The worry over Trump as president increases with each passing day as inauguration looms closer. I'm not worried myself, because we have a government that is built with checks and balances. I don't believe the gloom and doom about Trump. Already, I see the debaters in Google+ scoring points against each other and I see the posturing. I've also noticed some anarchists coming out in the debates I've participated in. Some are gun rights activists. I know this because I can check their profile to see what they're promoting with their Google+ accounts.

"Guns don't kill people, people do." This is the mantra of most gun rights activists, and they're right. That doesn't mean we should not regulate the sale and use of guns. That slogan simply makes the observation that guns are inanimate objects and do their damage in human hands.

I have a song playing in my head and I can't get it to go away. It's called "Heartache Tonight", by The Eagles. They are the ultimate band for the bar scene because that's what they sing about. I see the bar scene as being analogous to the playground and high school. That song "knows" that someone will get hurt tonight and assumes that no one can do anything about it. The Eagles were a big part of American pop culture for my generation and they provide some of the inspiration for this article.

I'm also reminded of this very interesting quote from a former member of the Nixon Administration:

“You want to know what this was really all about,” Ehrlichman, who died in 1999, said, referring to Nixon’s declaration of war on drugs. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

That was from John Ehrlicman, counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon. It is a rather startling admission of the need of those in power to score points against those not in power. The attitudes expressed by the drug war clearly show the need to silence the opposition, the dissent, so that other wars may proceed without challenge. It is all about scoring points against the other side.

More recently, I'm now seeing worry about efforts by the GOP to defund Planned Parenthood. There are some who would have us believe that efforts to defund Planned Parenthood are about defunding abortions performed by the agency, but I've seen very well documented proof that no federal money is used to pay for abortion services at Planned Parenthood. Defunding Planned Parenthood means removing funding for a wide range of services that women need to check on and maintain their health. Again, I see one party with power scoring points against someone with less power.

Maybe it's just me, but lately, politics has become a sport to some and for them, it's all about scoring points. I disagree. Politics is not a sport for me. Politics about how we can all get along together. In peace.

As we close the book on the Obama Administration, I see that people are worried about Obamacare. There are serious concerns that millions will be booted from their health care plans, their insurance, and a portable system that works regardless of jobs or employers. Millions of Americans found that they are no longer tied down to one employer just for health insurance, always a dismissal away from being uninsured. Millions of Americans found that they could work part time and still have health insurance and made a choice to work part time.

With the election of Donald Trump, we see Republicans, with their majorities in Congress, ready and willing to repeal Obamacare. Yet, few if any can point to a practical and realistic replacement for Obamacare offered by Republicans. It is even a fair question to ask if Republicans did whatever they could to hobble Obamacare with amendments to the legislation that were tacked on in committee or during reconciliation proceedings as the legislation went from House to Senate and back. Their goal, it seems, is to make sure that no government healthcare program could ever work.

A fair number of conservatives that I've encountered in social media debates on the subject would have us believe that private enterprise has clean hands. Yet I can recall upon the passage of Obamacare how private insurance companies jacked up rates, leaving the marketplaces set up for Obamacare and generally, acting like sore losers in the debate, doing everything they could to make Obamacare bitter for the beneficiaries.

More than a few conservatives in debate and in the op-ed pages worried that Obamacare paved the way towards a single payer system. They worry about a government monopoly on healthcare. What they fail to acknowledge is that in many cases wherever government monopolies are compared to private monopolies, government monopolies tend to be more efficient. 

We have a natural experiment to consider with public vs private monopolies: internet access. In millions of homes across the country, most people have one or two broadband providers, and they are mostly private service providers. This is not a sign of thriving competition. These private monopolies are often unresponsive to the needs of the communities they claim to serve. They use a portion of their profits to lobby for greater protection of their business interests. Protection? From what? Municipal broadband.

In places like Colorado, Tennessee and even Utah, incumbent providers faced with real competition from "the public option" have spent millions lobbying statehouses to protect their monopolies. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, they have the very popular EPB, the Electric Power Board, now offering 1Gbps up and down service for $70 a month. Neighboring counties clamored for EPB service but are now denied service due to state legislation that prevents the EPB from servicing customers outside of their original service area. Incumbent providers like Comcast, Time-Warner and ATT all lobbied hard against the EPB, claiming unfair competition. This is what I mean when private enterprise claims the need for protection against "the public option". This is what opponents of Obamacare are afraid of - that the public option might actually work.

In Colorado, communities fed up with the private monopolies of Centurylink, Comcast and ATT decided to build their own broadband services run by the local municipalities. The incumbent providers prevailed again with a state law that says that communities may not provide public internet service without passing a series of hoops intended to hobble adoption of municipal broadband, again claiming unfair competition from a public utility. The law had an out, the referendum.

To date, 95 governments in Colorado have passed referendums seeking local control over their internet access to escape the grasp of the private monopolies running the show in their towns. Often, these referendums passed with better than 80% of the vote, sometimes breaching 90%.

Colorado is not exactly a hotbed of liberal passion, either. They are a mostly Republican state and have found the low hanging fruit of change is at the local level. Colorado passed legislation making cannabis legal for recreational use. They are flirting with the idea of a public option in healthcare, too.

Long ago, I read of an insurance executive who was paid $80 million for one year of service. He was one of the highest paid executives in the United States. His company had a PR department that worked hard to justify this outrageous CEO compensation. The wealthy, when they find the power that comes with their wealth, seem to have a hard time knowing when to stop. How do they know enough is enough? They too, are scoring points.

I'm reminded again of the soup bowl study. They tested college students in two settings. In one room, the control group, the test subject was presented with a bowl of soup and something to read, like magazines. Students were asked to eat until they were full or until the soup was gone. Most ate until the bowl was empty. They stopped when they could see the bottom of the bowl.

In another room, they were presented with the same thing, but this time, there was a hose connected to the bottom of the bowl that would create a bottomless bowl of soup. Students with the bottomless bowl would not stop even after they were full because they were looking for the bottom of the bowl. Instead listening to their bodies, they were looking for external clues and references to determine if they had enough to eat.

Wealthy people do that. After making their first billion, do they have enough? I see hedge fund managers who make more money in a day than many people do in a lifetime. Oil company executives continue to work long after they have more money than they could ever hope to spend. Long after our environment has been polluted and denatured. The wealthy can use their money to influence politics, for better or worse. I see them just scoring points, too. They seem dependent on external cues for happiness.

Life is more than just scoring points: getting an A, getting rich, making the other side feel pain. Yet there are some people who want government to work that way. Legislative jockeying and political posturing is about scoring points and making the other side feel pain. We saw that with the government shutdown a few years ago. We saw that with the DNC and their deliberate plans to make Hillary the nominee. We're seeing it again now that Republicans have majorities in Congress and the White House. They're all about scoring points and making the other side lose or feel pain.

Government is not the problem. People are. The Washington Post has an interesting article about two socialist countries. One on the brink of economic and social collapse, the other experiencing economic growth and blossoming culture. Conservatives would score a point by telling us that Venezuela is getting what they deserve while omitting how well Bolivia is doing. Both countries made different decisions about how to allocate resources. Both countries have problems, just like ours, both countries have governments that are run by people and those people determined the outcomes.

People have frailties. They have faults. They are not perfect. When governments fail, it's not because of the system, it's because of the people. When governments are run by people who treat others with respect and empathy, it doesn't matter which system they're in, the people will be better off. In every case where there is tyranny, there are abusive people in abusive cultures raised by abusive parents. Hitler's Germany was an authoritarian culture seeking world domination. The system of government didn't make Germany that way, the people did. Scandinavian countries shun confrontation with their kids, they shun judgement of their kids and they actively work with their kids to solve the problems of life with them.

It doesn't matter if the service provider in any economy is public or private. If the people providing the service are abusive, we can expect abuses. It doesn't matter if the system of government is libertarian or totalitarian, if the people are abusive, we can expect abuses. It doesn't matter if the economy is socialist, communist or capitalist, if the people are abusive, we can expect abuses.

People who are abusive believe in reward and punishment. They believe in scoring points and making the other side suffer for their weaknesses. Abusive people have a really hard time finding or creating internal motivation to succeed, to do the right thing, to have empathy for others. Abusive people rely upon external cues for happiness. This is not to say that abusive people are bad. This is to say that abusive people lack the skills they need to get along with others and play nice.

We find abusive people in a continuum, from the violent to the merely passive aggressive. We find them in a cult of personality. We find them in identity politics where we are made to focus on the person rather than the policies. Abusive people in politics exhibit little interest in teaching skills and more interest in making people pay the price for their lack of skills.

So how do we break the cycle? How do we make the world a better place? Bernie Sanders said real change starts at the bottom. Although I don't think this is what he had in mind, I believe that real change starts with our kids. How we raise our kids determines their outcomes. We've tried teaching them how to score points, but in the end, they will not find happiness in a gold star or winning at the game of life. Scoring points means that someone else loses.

Achievement cannot fill empty arms. So we could teach them collaborative and proactive solutions. When we see challenging behavior in kids, we could look at the behavior as a signal rather than the problem. Then we work with the kids to solve the problem that gives rise to challenging behavior. In so doing, we teach kids how to meet their own needs without making someone else lose. We teach them to be internally motivated to solve problems independent of how other people act.

Where could we learn about this? We could start with a book by Ross W. Greene, PhD., "Raising Human Beings". In fact, this isn't just for kids, this is for adults, too. The principles described in this book (and a few others by the same guy), are not just techniques for getting along. They are a way of life.

Dr. Greene is not the only one on this trail. There are many others on the same trail. They too, have learned that reward and punishment don't work. Happiness is not about scoring points or getting the best of someone else or making them lose. Maybe the human race is starting to learn that happiness is knowing that we have the skills to solve problems with durable, repeatable solutions.

Isn't that what government is supposed to be for?