Yesterday PR - Today Scouts

[euphononium]

what about looking at running as not only a punishment, but as a(n) endurance/stamina builder as well.. conditioning if you will. that kid will be able to march his show better than anyone in a couple weeks if he keeps up the mental breaks. it isn't just a way to break kids down in all ways possible.

Edited May 26, 2008 by euphononium

[baristeve]

what about looking at running as not only a punishment, but as a(n) endurance/stamina builder as well.. conditioning if you will. that kid will be able to march his show better than anyone in a couple weeks if he keeps up the mental breaks. it isn't just a way to break kids down in all ways possible.

running, as a punishment, is dumb for drum corps... he probably would have gotten it right sooner had he not missed the reps.. reps of parts of the show are more important than running.

[mad_scotty]

the madison way, as i was taught it, is that since you are expected to behave with a degree of professionalism, you'll be treated as an adult by staff. that means no one ever gave pushups or laps, ever. you gave them to yourself, and you did them on your time, not the corps time, and no one ever missed a rep. the closest anyone came to giving out pushups as a punishment was when someone did something so obviously bad everyone in the corps saw it, and they didn't do pushups on their own, and someone would walk up to them and do pushups right in front of them, sort of like, pushups were clearly indicated, since you didn't someone had to cover them for you. that was a 2 or 3 times a summer type incident, maybe. but staff never said hey, you go run laps, or do pushups, and if they had, i think the entire corps would have lost respect for the staffer in question.

[mobrien]

True. It's a basic psychology principal.

Which explains why successful businesses all over the US tell employees who've made mistakes to go clean the toilets in the next building before coming back to their desks and finding out how to correct their error.

Edited May 26, 2008 by mobrien

[Zanbyrnes]

Which explains why successful businesses all over the US tell employees who've made mistakes at their jobs to go clean the toilets in the next building before coming back and correcting their error.

I've seen several PR rehearsals and, from what i've experienced, they only require the running when someone has done the SAME mistake over and over. I would be surprised if the member was running as a result of the first time making a mistake. But the 3rd or 4th time....

I do know that during their Brass Boot Camp, the members want to adhere to a "no tolerance" policy when it comes to making repeated errors.

$.02

Z

Edited May 26, 2008 by Zanbyrnes

[Phantombari1]

Remember back in the day the entire corp took the brunt of repeated mistakes. Better to focus on the offender. If it's a matter of focus, as is the case mentioned earlier, I don't see a problem with it. Those few minutes of precious practice time mentioned by WV80 were spent unimpeded by the rest of the corp while the offender got to listen to the piece done correctly. Everybody wins!

[Phantombari1]

Double post

Edited May 27, 2008 by Phantombari1

[vferrera]

The "psychology principle" is that punishment is not very effective when it comes to teaching complex tasks. This has been known since the early 20th century (Does the name Pavlov ring any bells? Thorndike, Watson, Skinner?). There is a ton of literature on this, but it boils down to a few simple things:

1. Punishing someone for being wrong does not teach them how to be right.

2. The brain is programmed to learn, not to unlearn.

3. Punishment focuses attention on the "mistake." Attention reinforces the mistake rather than extinguishing it.

4. like I said before, punishment = fear. Fear blocks learning.

That said, when I was in Scouts, push-ups were not really used as punishment. More like an excuse to do some strength/conditioning. Someone else mentioned this as well.

I don't know how Phantom works and I am not commenting at all on the teaching abilities of their staff.

[euphononium]

running, as a punishment, is dumb for drum corps... he probably would have gotten it right sooner had he not missed the reps.. reps of parts of the show are more important than running.

it is only freakin' everydays.

they're going to rep it 5,000 times anyways.

the kid will get to it.

it is a great way to get people to do it right the first time and every other time after that. who the heck wants to run anyways?

[ChicagoFan]

I'm not sure why I'm jumping into this rather tedious argument but, here goes: If I remember correctly, the infraction for which the member was being made to do laps was coming in a measure too soon. Such a mistake is surely just that -- a mistake or mental lapse. Sometimes, a form of "punishment" is effective in teaching a performer not to make the same careless error again. After having been made to run laps or do push-ups, I would darn well be sure to count the passage in question so that I came in on time in the future. However, punishing someone for a lack of ability or some other shortcoming is, in my opinion, counterproductive. Were I being punished because I couldn't yet execute a certain skill or hadn't mastered a difficult passage, I would likely respond in a negative way.