In re: Signal article, “Saugus district board approves behavior consulting workshop,” by Maya Morales, April 3.
Problem solving obviously first requires identifying and acknowledging that a problem actually exists, which is the easy part for anyone paying attention. Then comes the hard part, where all of the probable causes come into play and possible solutions are debated and tried out. I’m really big on the Occam’s Razor philosophy that states that all other things being equal the simplest answer is normally the best.
Unfortunately, in today’s world people seem to ignore the simple solutions while spending tons of time and money on complicated ones that never seem to work. Perhaps that is actually their goal, since solving the problem means they are no longer needed!
As any animal trainer can tell, you rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior works really well, and like it or not we humans are also animals and that technique has worked for as long as we have been around up until all the touchy-feely crap started in the 1960s and ’70s and has continued on to present day. So how’s that been working out so far?
Perhaps learning from the past might be the wise way to handle a lot of the problems we see today.
Rick Barker
Valencia
