Chris Lehmann at The Faculty Room writes on Cheektowaga Middle School up the road from me, profiled in the New York Times for its hard-line disciplinary tactics.

My colleague Joe Henderson suggested a post on it, in light of some stuff I talk up regularly on the blog in regards to the massive and irreplaceable value of intrinsic motivation in school. I thought I would respectfully request the originator of Self-Determination Theory himself, Dr. Ed Deci, to comment instead.

Dr. Deci, in case you don’t know, is the author or co-author of much of the motivation research used by major education experts in the field, including Alfie Kohn and Robert Marzano. Very kindly, he agreed to help out.

I pitched to him three possible arguments for the idea that Cheektowaga Middle School is taking the appropriate approach to their problems. Here’s his responses.

Statement: A highly disruptive and dysfunctional situation such as the one at Cheektowaga requires initial Draconian measures. Once order is restored, then perhaps a more autonomous approach can be adopted, but not before.

Dr. Deci: A highly disruptive and dysfunctional situation is a tough one to deal with, that is true. But my inclination is to avoid Draconian controls. They are most likely to exacerbate rather than help. In troubled situations, it is necessary to reach students, and it may take “big measures” but control and force are not the methods most likely to work. How about some restructuring that allows teachers and students to interact
in more meaningful ways, for example. I agree it is not easy, but it is important to try to understand the students’ perspectives in order to work with them toward meaningful change. The Cheektowaga situation is one where students’ perspectives seem to be being run over rather than understood and acknowledged.

Statement: Middle schoolers, and children in general, do not have the developmental maturity to handle an autonomous management approach. Because of their youth, they require “carrots and sticks” to facilitate the internalization of societal values.

Dr. Deci: This is utter nonsense. It is possible to have elementary students who are relatively autonomous in their self-regulation and who do not require carrots and sticks to any significant degree, so to say middle school students are not old enough (or mature enough) to be autonomous is inaccurate ideology.

Statement: The minority population of the school (35% Latino and African-American) would respond positively to authoritarian, teacher-centered management, as this is a cultural norm for them (as Lisa Delpit argues).

Dr. Deci: First, I doubt that that minority students respond positively to authoritarian approaches. If that is what they are getting at home and elsewhere, and if they were responding positively to it, there would not be the problems that are apparently being faced in Cheektowaga.

Second, whenever we have looked at our data in terms of differences in majority vs. minority participants, we have not seen meaningful differences in how they respond to autonomy support. It has positive effects for minority participants and for low-income participants just as it does for “majority” participants. Autonomy support works for females as well as males (some people say it is a male thing); autonomy support works for eastern cultures as well as western (some say it is a western thing); and it works for low-income individuals as well as high-income individuals (some say it is only a high-income thing). So, there is no solid empirical basis for the Delpit view that I have ever seen.

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Thoughts, readers?