Choice Theory (44 page)

The people in Corning were cautiously enthusiastic. They agreed to go ahead as far as getting a hundred people, who are representative of the community, to read the book, which could be in their hands by January 1, 1998. Then the hundred, plus any others who read it, will meet with Carleen and me for two days in late January. In this meeting, we will decide where to go from there. Since they are willing to make this pioneering commitment, we will charge nothing but our travel expenses as long as this project takes. So far, people in the community have offered to put us up in their homes so there will be no hotel expenses.

For me, this could be an incredible learning experience. I did not charge the Schwab Middle School in Cincinnati for the seventy days I spent learning and teaching there. If I had not spent that time in Schwab, I could not have learned much of what I have written here about education. As I did at Schwab, I have no intention of asking for money or any formal contract from Corning. But what we did at Schwab worked, and although Corning is a larger project, it may be easier, at least in the beginning. The rest of this chapter describes my vision of a quality community and what I believe may be done in Corning until we meet in January 1998.

Although I was not aware of it, the vision of a quality community based on choice theory started in the early 1960s, well before I began thinking about what has now become choice theory. From 1956 to 1967, I was the psychiatrist for what was then called the Ventura School for Girls, which was run as a prison school by the California Youth Authority. A new school was built in 1962 that housed 400 adolescent delinquent girls. What I describe here happened in that new school.

I now realize that we created a quality community. We were the mothers, fathers, counselors, and teachers of those girls whose whole world was enclosed by a high fence and barbed wire. Without knowing it, we practiced choice theory. All we did was tested
by the core idea of that theory:
Would what we do bring the girls and us closer together or further apart?

These girls had a lot of experience with external control psychology and were about as far apart from us when they came in as anyone could be. They had committed a variety of crimes, had almost uniformly been sexually abused, and almost all were involved with drugs. The girls were used to running the streets freely and were hostile to the idea of being locked up. When they left our school, usually after about ten months, some had to be put into straitjackets to get them into the car to go home. They didn’t want to leave what for many was the first place in years where they felt cared for.

Many stayed out of trouble; the success rate for them on parole was very high. If they could have left to go to a quality community, where improving relationships was a major concern, we would have had a much higher success rate. But if they had grown up in such a community and had gone to a quality school, most would never have been sent to Ventura.

The scene that I describe next depicts the very essence of a quality community. It graphically illustrates what could be duplicated in every aspect of a community that was willing to learn and use choice theory. If you agree that what we did was effective and can conceive of trying to do the same in your own life, as an individual, you are ready to make the move. Get a hundred people, including some of the community leaders, to agree that it works, and you’ll have the beginning of a choice theory-based quality community.

At Ventura, the girls had individual rooms with their own keys, but for security, they were locked in at night. In the morning all the doors were open, and the house mother walked up and down the two wings to do what she could to help fifty girls get started for the day. If you have one adolescent girl at home, you can appreciate her job. The girls called her Ma and thought of her as their mother. The cottage was their home. Occasionally, we had trouble, but not for long because of what we did, which is well illustrated in the following incident.

A big, tough-looking girl named Tracy, who was hostile and threatening, had come to the cottage the day before. After the staff and the girls did what they could, she seemed a little more accepting of where she was when she went to bed. But the following morning, instead of getting her room ready, Tracy sat on her unmade bed, waiting. When she didn’t show up for breakfast, the house mother went down to her room and asked, “Do you need some help?”

The house mother was immediately barraged with a series of curses and threats from Tracy, who had been planning to let her have it when she showed up. She tried to comfort Tracy, asked her politely to make her bed, and told her come to breakfast and that they would talk more after she ate. She also told Tracy that if she was still upset, she didn’t have to go to school that day.

“It’s not
my
bed; if you want the fucking bed made, make it yourself,” Tracy shouted. “You’re lucky I haven’t torn this room apart. I didn’t ask to come here. Why don’t you just get off my back. Leave me alone. I’ll come out there when I feel like it.”

“All the girls make their beds. I’m not asking you to do anything different. C’mon, just do it and let’s go eat. The girls have been asking about you; they hope you’ll be happy here.”

Notice that the house mother paid no attention to the threats and curses, returning hostility with kindness. She had a lot of experience dealing with angry new arrivals.

“OK, I’ll come to breakfast, but I’m not going to make the bed.”

This was the crucial point. The rule was that everyone made her own bed, so it was important that Tracy make her bed. But it was also important that in the process, we didn’t separate ourselves any further from this already alienated girl. The house mother knew what to do. Stop here and take a moment to see if you can figure out how she dealt with this situation, so that the bed got made and she got closer to Tracy. If you know choice theory, this is what you will almost always be able to figure out. If everyone in a community knew choice theory, all could handle situations like this at home, in school, and in the community much
better than most do now. In time, the community could be transformed.

If you are still an external control person, and I know it will take more than one reading of this book to convince you to change to choice theory, every fiber of your being is crying out,
I
wouldn’t take that from her. If she gets away with it, this whole cottage will fall apart. No matter what it takes, I’ve got to show her who’s in charge here and make her follow the rules.

Here is what the house mother did. It was pure choice theory and achieved the goal of helping Tracy get over her hostility and accept her new life in the cottage. If Tracy gave the school any further trouble, something like this statement would be repeated.

“How about if I ask one of the girls who was wondering about how you were doing to come down here and help you make the bed.”

“Fine with me, except she’s going to have to make it. I don’t make beds for nobody.”

Tracy’s hostility was already simmering down. Tracy didn’t curse any more because the house mother didn’t show any concern for her language or her threats. All the house mother offered was help, but she didn’t back down on getting the bed made. She also didn’t say, “I’m the boss and you’d better make that bed,” which would have led to more trouble and to Tracy moving further away from everyone than she already was. The house mother left, and a girl came down to the room.

She said, “I see your name is Tracy. I’m Jill. I hear you’re unhappy. Can I help?”

“I hate it here. I hated Juvy [juvenile hall], but I never thought I’d end up here. I’m really pissed. How can you stand this fucking place?”

“I felt just like you when I came in. But I’ll tell you, it’s not so bad. It’s a lot better than Juvy and the reception center.” All the girls went to a reception center after juvenile hall and were sent to Ventura from that center.

“Do they make you go to school? I hate school.”

“They don’t make you do anything, but we all do it. It’s really weird, but we do.”

“You mean, they won’t make me make this bed, and they don’t make you go to school and you go? Are you kidding me?”

“Sure I go. It’s a lot better than sitting in the cottage all day. I like the school; they have a neat setup where they teach us cosmetology. I could do your hair if you wanted.”

Girls helping each other is a powerful technique. We always tried that first at Ventura. It is so much more effective than what many schools and institutions do: have staff members use external control, which makes things worse. But we helped the girls to learn choice theory as we do at Huntington Woods and are beginning to do at Schwab.

“Well, I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“This fucking bed, I still don’t want to make it.”

“Then sit here and I’ll make it for you. It’s no big deal. Or we could make it together. C’mon, I’m getting hungry. If we don’t get there soon, they’ll eat up all the food.”

The girls made the bed together and went to breakfast. The house mother didn’t say anything except to welcome Tracy with a cup of coffee and ask her if she needed a cigarette. In those days, all the girls and most of the staff smoked, and a cigarette was allowed after meals and at other times—eight cigarettes a day for both the staff and girls. There were no special staff privileges at Ventura. Keep this scene in mind as you think about choice theory. If almost everyone in a community can understand and agree with what we did at Ventura, at least enough to try to use some choice theory in these common difficult situations, the rest of what has to be done to create a quality community will be easy.

We’ve all lived so long with external control psychology that it’s difficult to conceive of what it would be like to live without it.
Just look back to the girl in the Ventura School. By the end of that day, Tracy was part of the group. No one needed to threaten or punish her; it was all over. We could go for months with the toughest girls in California and not have a serious incident, much less an ongoing problem. But if you visited the school, you wouldn’t see what we accomplished. You would see a lot of happy, teenage girls and wonder out loud, as my sister-in-law did when she visited, “Where are the delinquent girls?” If you walked around a quality community, you might wonder, What’s so good about this? Even if you lived in one, you might wonder, What’s different?

The change would be subtle, but you would see it. The streets would be cleaner and the people more friendly. It would take a while, but the fear that is always present, even in small communities like Corning, would be reduced. A person coming from another small town might see it more quickly than you and remark on what he or she saw. The people in the community would be looking for change, and the newspapers would send out reporters to inquire about change. I believe the changes would take time, but if the people began to use choice theory in any substantial way, they would see change.

If the schools made the choice to work toward becoming quality schools, the students, teachers, and parents would notice it. If you talk to a teacher in a quality school, he or she will say: “Everyone’s happier and the students are working harder. Teaching’s a lot more fun than it used to be.” The visitors would say, as they do at Huntington Woods, “Why can’t other schools be like this?” If Wyoming, Michigan, was moving toward a quality community and the teachers in the other schools were learning choice theory, not as part of an in-service training program but as part of a community program, it would be natural for them to think about having their schools work toward becoming quality schools. Huntington Woods has been a quality school for three years. It is visited by people from all over the world, but none of the other schools in the community has attempted to go in that direction. This is why a quality community is needed.

In a quality community, domestic violence would also decrease. When it occurred, there would be something tangible that could be done for it, similar to what the First Step Program, in Fostoria, Ohio, mentioned in chapter 8, does. But a quality community would go beyond the efforts of that program as good as it is, since the First Step Program operates after violence has occurred. In a quality community, where many wives and husbands would be learning choice theory and the solving circle, a great deal of spousal disagreements that later escalate to violence would be prevented.

But if the domestic violence reached such a level that the police were involved, the couple would be advised to enter the First Step Program, and the judge, at his or her discretion, could offer this program as an alternative to imprisonment or fines. The key to dealing with all violence is early intervention before much harm is done or before jail becomes the only choice the judge has. This nonpunitive, educational intervention is ideal. The couple does not have to be taught how to use choice theory; all they have to do is learn it together. To use it then becomes obvious, and how they are using it becomes part of the learning experience.

In a quality community as soon as anyone found out that a child was being mistreated at home or was not getting along at school or in the community,
this information would be considered a community emergency.
Most of the adolescents who were in serious trouble would be known to the community long before they did anything criminal. Early help saves individuals a lot of suffering and the community a great deal of money. My vision is that as soon as a substantial number of people in the community, both professional and nonprofessional, learned choice theory and were speaking a common language, some kind of a community effort would be created to deal with these children as soon as they were discovered. Both Carleen and I would like to offer ongoing consultation to this vital effort. What communities do now is punish or neglect; neither works, and things get worse.