Getting students to make the right choices - one way or another

There is a funny story about a school where in the bathrooms, girls would try on lipstick and press their lips to the mirror, leaving lip prints that were very hard to clean off.   The teachers repeatedly asked the girls not to do this, to no avail - and it was very hard to stop, as no-one could supervise the bathrooms all day, or even be sure as to who was doing it, as CCTV isn't possible in these areas.

But the problem was solved because the janitor came up with a brilliant solution - he got a lot of the girls together, said he thought they probably did not understand  what hard work it was to clean, and said he was going to give a demonstration.  At this point, there was  not a lot of interest from the students.  But he then proceeded to get a brush,  dunk it in the nearest toilet and proceed to clean the mirror.    This was, according to the story, the last day that any lip marks appeared on mirror!

Great story - and it might even be true; the point being that if we find the right way to motivate people then we do not need to worry too much about supervision, monitoring and systems of control. 

The message is clear: We don't always take the right path, so we need to

 design systems to encourage us to do so, by our own accord.          Source

 
In this story disgust was a great motivator, and I wonder about the possibility of instilling disgust at littering, bullying or - more abstractly - injustice and inequality.  In general, though, my instinct is to avoid negative motivators like disgust, fear, anxiety, shame, anger, frustration - not that they are not powerful emotions (they are), but if I don't like feeling them (and I certainly do not) why would I have policies which inflict them on others?  It feels wrong to me.

Finding the right motivators might sound 'soft'.  You might ask, why not just tell people what to do?  and I am frequently exhorted to take that 'command and control' approach.   The reason is, in general, that it doesn't work.  And contrary to myths, it doesn't even work in what is perceived to be the the most command and control organisation of all - the military.  Margaret Wheatley notes that the great irony is that the military learned long ago that if you want to win, you have to engage the intelligence of everyone involved in the battle. I’ve heard many military commanders state that if you have to order a soldier to do something, then you failed as a leader.

As any regular reader will know, I believe that in the biggest picture, the best motivator is a deep understanding of an issue.  And deep understanding should be what schools are about.  But teenagers are teenagers, and there's no point in being naive about the sorts of things that go on schools.  In some cases, ingenious solutions  - like the janitor had for lipstick on the mirrors - can be shortcuts to address specific behavioural issues.   Sometimes simply reframing issues correctly can help a lot; here I am thinking of the way that a school in Texas used to show students all the health issues to do with smoking - with little effect.  In fact, making it dangerous appealed to those students for whom bravado was part of their image; and in fact encouraged some of them!  The school did make progress, however, when it showed students how they were targeted by Big Tobacco as vulnerable and easily influenced; a great source of revenue  - a veritable 'cash-cow' as they say.  Once students began to see smoking less as a sign of cool rebellion, and more a sign of being a dupe, a gullible sucker, it became a lot less attractive.  

The difficult thing in these cases is to understand the motivators behind a behaviour; because these may be easier to influence than the behavior itself.  This approach can complement the regrettably also-necessary approach of having firm and transparent consequences.

References
Wheatley, M (2007) Finding our Way . Beret Koehler