For years, society has turned to punishment as a method to change a person's negative behaviors. Our prisons and juvenile detention facilities are practically overflowing due to our determination to continue with the ideology of punishment = improved behavior. However, research is conclusive that punishment does not change negative behaviors for most people. In fact, the individuals for whom punishment works are those who were unlikely to commit the offense in the first place; and they may have benefitted by an array of consequences, not necessarily negative ones. .
There is, as is typical of any ideology, some criticism of the effects and consequences of Positive Behavior Intervention Support. For instance, there is concern about providing material reinforcements to students for behaving in a manner that should just be expected. Furthermore, there are questions asked about the idea of rewarding someone for appropriate behavior, because that may not be truly representative of how things work in the real world, after graduating from school. However, it is my belief that for some individuals, appropriate behaviors must be learned and shaped because they are not innate, nor have they been learned. Additionally, I believe that we do continue to work for rewards as adults. Although I enjoy my position as an educator, I believe that I work hard at it, at least partially, because it provides a means to support me and my family. Furthermore, my work with children over the past twenty years has given me much reason to believe that a solid knowledge of social mores, norms, and use of good judgment is not always an individual's response to a difficult situation. Because today's children have been raised at a time when violence is the norm on television and in the news, and when the economy has required people to access their basic necessities to support a family in ways that are less conventional than were used in the past, we cannot assume that all children know right from wrong.
