“If we hope to stem the mass destruction that inevitably attends our economic system, fundamental historical, social, economic, and technological forces need to be pondered, understood, and redirected. Behavior won’t change much without a fundamental change in consciousness. The question becomes: How do we change consciousness?”
― Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe
I’m thinking a lot about language this week. Not literacy or grammar, but the language we choose that constructs our culture. I’m generally not as extreme as the Jensen quote above, but I’ve noticed that the language we choose is important because it has the ability to change our consciousness.
I was looking over an electronic “Discipline Tracking Form” this week (more about “discipline” in the next post) and realized how profoundly numb we’ve become to some language. The form was designed prior to current research on Positive Psychology and Positive Behavior Supports, so I’m not demonizing it (yes, I meant to choose that word). Here are some of the terms used:
Officer – to describe the adult responsible for managing the situation
Offense – to describe the incidence or action being documented
Demerit History – to describe cumulative little infractions in a punitive system
If these sound a little militaristic or prison-like, they are. I’m not one for excusing kids from responsibility or using kid gloves instead of tough love. However, simply changing negative language even on what seems like a bureaucratic pass-through form, has the ability to change behavior because the language we use can change consciousness. Nowhere on the form does it provide space to identify “cause” or “motivation” for the incidence, which might encourage the adults involved to actually reflect upon their roles in why the student had an issue. All other things aside, if despite our teaching a student’s choices are so wrought with infractions that we need to document it on a form, how much better could it change our consciousness, and subsequently our behavior, if we used words like “responsible adult”, “incidence”, or “reteaching history”.
Bad things are going to happen. Kids will make mistakes. The language we use subconsciously informs our behaviors, so if we don’t change language even in subtle, seemingly superfluous places, like forms and hallway conversations, we risk losing touch with our mission as educators…to lift others up to their potential.