Should We Shock?

Posted by Greg Cruey May 25, 2006

The news stories about electric shock as a learning tool for some New York public school students has raised a lot of eyebrows.

I'm not really a Behaviorist. The approach is probably the most incomplete view of learning. It has the attraction of being simple. And (okay) I admit that I've reinforced desirable behavior in my students with positive stimuli ("anyone who gets all the math problems right gets a free snack"). But learning is more involved than that.

Positive reinforcement is one thing. As incomplete at the larger theory of Behaviorism may be, positive reinforcement works (and raises few serious ethical dilemmas). Aversive therapy is something else. Does it work? Can I extinguish an undesirable behavior (like, say, name calling) in a mentally impaired teenager by shocking them whenever they do it? Sure. It works with white rats and with monkeys, too. But does efficiency alone make it acceptable? Even in an environment where everyone is sincerely concerned for the welfare of the child and there are no other agendas, human judgment is sometimes flawed and behavior is sometimes more complicated than it appears.

The biggest problem with Behaviorism is simple; it functions on the assumption that what goes on inside a child's head is irrelevant - mostly because it can't be observed. But the opposite is probably more true. Mental states, emotions, and thought processes are more important to long term success with a student than Behaviorism accounts for.

The important questions in this debate are not about learning itself; they are about ethics. We shouldn't be asking if aversive therapies work. We should be asking if this is something we do to other people whether it works or not.

I agree with the words of Leo Sarkissian, executive director of the Association of Retarded Citizens of Massachusetts quoted in the Boston Globe: "We don't do this to prisoners in the criminal justice system, so we shouldn't be doing it to people with disabilities."

So if you live in New York, sign the petition...