Ignoring sounds good in theory

I completely agree with Loretta's blog, especially her last paragraph about the differences between "incompatible behaviors" and more severe behaviors. It sounds really nice, in theory, to say that teachers should just ignore behaviors that they do not wish to see repeated and reward behaviors they wish to continue. In the real-world, as Loretta points out, this is simply not possible. If a student is bullying another student, physically or verbally, a teacher would be at-risk of losing their job if they simply ignored the behavior. Even with more mundane negative behaviors, like acting out in class, a teacher ignoring the behavior is not going to get it to stop. Even if the child is just looking for attention, they are getting that attention from the other 20 students in the class. Our discussion in class last week failed to consider real-world situations.

Further, in classroom situations, it is not possible to reward good behaviors consistently enough to change behaviors. For a student who acts out in class, yes a teacher can reward/praise that student when they are working quietly in their seat, but is the teacher supposed to do this every single time that behavior occurs? Again, we lost all context in our discussion last week. Even if we think more about animal training, if I want my dog to stop trying to eat poop whenever we go on a walk, behaviorists would suggest rewarding the times when he doesn't eat poop. Well, that's like 98% of the time; how can you reward consistent behavior effectively? Also, if he does start to eat it, correction is necessary, because by ignoring it, he's going to eat and get sick, possibly severely. You have to correct bad/harmful behaviors.

There's a reason that behaviorism and operant learning fell out of vogue and were replaced by other, more sophisticated learning theories; they are woefully inadequate to understand and change human behavior.