HELP FOR TROUBLED YOUTH

Introduction

We have a nation of troubled youth: youth who have trouble defining themselves, youth who are killing and maiming each other at an unprecedented rate. The rate of violence among youth in the United States is many times higher than other nations. Why is this? Why at this time in our history is this occurring?

Is it because of television? Is it the fault of gangs? Is it because of declining morals and values? Is it because of the break-up of the family unit? Is it the fault of our educational system? Our correctional system? Our welfare system? Are our churches failing us? All of these have been pointed to as causes.

Proposed solutions have been just as numerous. We want the government to fix the welfare system, to change the correctional system, to put more money into education, to upgrade the television programming. We want other institutions (such as churches, families, schools, etc.) to teach more and better morals and values. The list goes on. Why don’ t these solutions work?

Why Our Youth are so Troubled

So why are our youth so troubled? And why do we have more violence committed by our youth of today? I think the answer is in a combination of factors which are coming together in a unique way. These factors are:

1. We have presupposed that students know how to learn in the classroom and perform the academic tasks we assign to them -- they don’ t. A large number have been traumatized by their inability to succeed in school.

2. Television and movies transmit direct sensory experience INTO us. Whereas, when we read or listen, our sensory responses have to be connected to our own experiences or made up. Therefore, it is difficult for most of us to imagine a vivid experience of which we do not have some experience. When we watch movies and TV, we have the opportunity to directly experience new thoughts that are vivid and rich.

3. Because TV and movies transmit visual sensory experience, it can be transmitted faster (the old adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" fits here).

4. Because of world wide communication networks, these visual sensory experiences are coming in from all over the world and are virtually instantaneous.

5. Because of the above factors 2-4, change is occurring faster and faster. The changes are occurring faster at all levels -- personal, family, community, country, and global.

6. The youth have already been traumatized by not being able to keep up in school. These rapidly moving changes add to the trauma. They begin to feel overwhelmed and out of control.

7. The feelings of being overwhelmed and out of control and without the resources to keep up generates frustration and anger.

8. When they attend movies and watch TV, they sometimes watch fast paced actions in which the actors deal with frustration and anger and solve problems with violence.

9. They identify with the movies and accept the solution of violence -- particularly when they see around them and on TV more and more other troubled youth using violence to deal with their frustration and anger.

Many adults are affected by these factors also. Since most of them grew up in a much slower paced world with more defined role models, they had the opportunity to learn some values to help keep their emotions in check. However, there are many adults today who are feeling more and more overwhelmed and angry. They also do not have adequate learning strategies to keep up with the fast moving changes; such as having to change jobs and careers and learn new terminology and technology and new procedures and to learn it NOW. Many times their old learning strategies (that worked in a slower paced classroom in which the teachers spoon fed them) fail them in the fast paced workplace.

Sometimes these adults release their frustration and anger in their families. The result is a high divorce rate and the breakup of the family unit. This further adds to the frustration and anger of the child and takes away one of the last remaining bastions of stability. They turn to peers and gangs who are feeling the same way so that they can feel a sense of belonging and of stability.

Many adults wonder why it is so different for our youth of today in school. They reason that they were able to succeed or at least cope in school and they cannot understand why their children are having so much trouble. There are several reasons:

First of all, we have been pushing more content down into our schools. The students of today are learning things that some of the adults did not have to learn until college or later. In fact, some of the information that our children are learning now did not even exist when the adults were in school.

Secondly, we are in an information explosion brought about by all the factors cited above coupled with the high tech society that is pushing back the frontiers of knowledge at an increasingly faster pace.

Thirdly, our information dissemination systems are getting faster and faster-- computers, TV, the Internet, satellite communications, etc.

We adults are overwhelmed by the information explosion. Our children are overwhelmed even more because of the above factors and because they do not have the resources to cope. The result is the growing frustration and anger that we are seeing in the troubled youth of today.

The Problem

When babies are born, everybody is so amazed at how fast they can learn. Even as they grow into toddlers and very young children, their ability to learn very rapidly and easily continues to amaze us. The unspoken assumption or presupposition out of which we start operating is that they can learn anything easily and rapidly. Then they hit school. The opening of school is eagerly anticipated and awaited. Sure there is some anxiety, but we think it will soon dissipate once they get used to their new surroundings. For many, school starts out as a fun experience where they value learning new things. For others, the anxiety generated by school activities and other factors combine to create a bad experience that has a major negative effect on them for the rest of their lives.

One of the major reasons that students of all ages have problems in school is the presupposition that they can easily and naturally learn in school without specifically being taught HOW to learn the academic subjects. We give them academic tasks such as spelling or math and assume that they can and will learn in the same amazing way that they had been learning prior to school. The problem with this is that learning in school is VERY different than learning skills that we are genetically wired to learn -- like walking and talking and social skills. The printed word is a man made (or person made) idea and skill. We have to learn HOW to read and understand it.

Unfortunately, we leave it to the student ‘s creativity to figure out how to do these academic tasks. The learning strategies that many students use are ineffective and inefficient and boring. This leads to low grades on tests and school work and a serious lack of motivation. This leaves the students, their parents, and their teachers very frustrated.

Even more important than the frustration, though, is the meaning that the student, parent, or teacher attaches to the low grades or lack of motivation. When we assign meaning to a grade, we can attach it at any of the "logical levels." Many times this meaning then becomes a part of the student s psychological makeup and personality in the form of a limiting belief. If the belief is negative then it has a limiting effect on the progress and development of the student. For example, I was recently talking to a 29 year old woman who recounted the story of how she had great trouble learning her 7's in her multiplication facts. She was called stupid by her older sister and was traumatized and has carried that stigma with her since the fourth grade. She still has problems with math and test anxiety to this day even though she is a college graduate and very intelligent.

Another typical story involves a 40 year old man who was in charge of the meeting room in which I was teaching. I noticed he would hang around in the back of the room listening very intently to the learning strategies I was teaching. At a break he came up to me and said, " What you are doing is very important. If I could just spell and read better I could manage this motel instead of delivering coffee and cleaning up the room. But I can’ t spell so I can’ t write memos or letters I get embarrassed because so many words are spelled wrong. And, since I can’ t read very well I wouldn’t be able to read memos or letters either. When I was in school I was told I had a learning disability because I couldn’t keep up. So they put me in special classes all through school. And I still couldn’t do the work. I remember one day in the sixth grade, I was at the board working fraction problems and couldn’t do it and the teacher screamed at me "Just go sit down. You are just dumb and you will never be able to learn." That happened a lot to me and I dropped out of school in the tenth grade because it was no use to go to school. Then I got into trouble and served time in prison. Now I am out and have a family and am trying to take care of them. But I am limited because I can’t spell or read very well.

The class I was teaching was based on my book "Rediscover the Joy of Learning", and I invited the gentleman in to tell his story to the class. My comment to them was "This is what we are about. What you are learning can help keep this kind of thing from happening in our schools". The good news is that I invited the gentleman into the class and had some of the students teach him learning strategies. He was able to learn them very rapidly and easily and was very excited about his new skills!

If you listen to how he described himself, you can hear the different beliefs he had at the various logical levels:

* "I can’ t spell or read very well" is a limiting belief at the capability level.

* "It was no use to go to school" is a limiting belief at the greater system level and at the identity level.

* "I’ m dumb and can’ t learn" is at the identity level and capability levels.

* "Can’ t read or write memos or letters" is at the behavior level

Learning the learning strategies is important. What is more important, though, is helping a person change his limiting beliefs at all logical levels to beliefs that empower learning.

Let’ s suppose that a student has just flunked a spelling test. Examples of the different meanings that could be attached to the different logical levels would come out in the language patterns and sound like the following:

LOGICAL LEVEL STATEMENT

Spiritual/Greater System "The school is dumb for making us learn spelling words."

Identity " I am dumb."

Beliefs/Values " Learning spelling words is dumb."

Capability " I don t know how to learn my spelling words."

Behavior " Should I write my spelling words 5 or 10 times?"

Environment " The classroom is too noisy."

Sometimes the student connects the meaning on their own. Sometimes other significant persons make the connection (like the 29 year old cited above). When the meaning is attached it acts like a thought virus that very rapidly spreads throughout the remaining logical levels.

In my experience, when a struggling student is taught HOW TO LEARN in a way that really works, it sets off a chain reaction of success. This can eventually positively affect their self esteem. Particularly if significant others (teachers and parents for example) know how to give positive feedback at the appropriate logical levels AND if they know how to change the limiting beliefs at the various logical levels. These changed beliefs become antidotes to the thought viruses.

Another way I use the logical levels is to observe how students take feedback (test results, oral correction, etc). Most of us have an automatic response to receiving negative feedback. It can range from " I’ ve done something wrong" to "I’ m a failure." Many students will get a low grade on homework or a test (which is feedback at the behavioral level) and assign the meaning of it to the identity level. They will take it personally by assuming that the grade means something about them as a person. Other students will assign meaning at the beliefs/values level by degrading the value of learning or the subject matter. Other students will take it to the highest level and blame the school system or the teaching staff. Still others will assign it to the capability level by assuming a bad grade means they can’ t do it.

If a student would just accept the grade as feedback at the behavior level so they could learn what behaviors to do differently, the feedback would not be nearly so traumatic and would be more helpful and easier to utilize. The purpose of feedback is to be able to make adjustments and improve. However, when the above phenomena occurs, the student is sometimes traumatized and develops non useful and limiting beliefs all up and down the logical levels.

The answer to dealing with the frustration and anger lies in dealing with the basic processes that are the cause of it. The presupposition that children know how to learn in the classroom is just one of the faulty presuppositions that undermine the foundation of our school system operations. Our school systems are based upon a shaky foundation of bad assumptions or presuppositions that dictate how we behave and operate the system. These faulty presuppositions have been inherited through the years and feel natural as though "they are just the way we do things". Taking a hard look at them gives us a real opportunity for some significant changes. Some of the presuppositions are:

BEHAVIORAL PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR SCHOOLS

I have been in education for many years and this never occurred to me until I started noticing that what students would attempt to do to accomplish the academic tasks we gave them would not work and they did not know what to do differently. Then it dawned on me that NOBODY (or at least no official part of the system) was taking responsibility for teaching children how to learn in the classroom. Sure, some individual teachers would share some of their learning strategies with students that struggled, but no part of the school system does it on a systematic basis.

The result is devastating to students because they assume something is wrong with them if they can t do the tasks assigned to them. So do their parents. So does everybody else. The truth is that most students do the best they can with what they know to do. If it doesn’t work or if it doesn’t work very well, they don’t know they are supposed to do something different. The idea hasn’t been broached because we have presupposed they already know how to learn.

Back in the industrial age, we designed our schools to resemble factories. We placed students in the same room according to age and proceeded to teach the content of that particular grade level. This presupposes that all the students learn in the same way and at the same rate of speed. We know this is not true, yet we continue the practice. This presupposition combined with the next one practically guarantees that many students will be traumatized.

The bell curve has become almost an icon in education which justifies the presupposition that some students will fail and/or do poorly. In fact, if a teacher gave all A’ s and B’ s, they would be accused of being too easy or of grade inflation. But what if we assumed that all students were capable of learning equally well and we taught them to succeed in the classroom? What if we expected all students to learn easily and quickly in the classroom? How would it affect our schools? How would it affect the students?

How long would any business expect to last in the corporate world if 20-30% of their product was expected to be shoddy or poorly made?

The most common response to some of these presuppositions is "How else could we operate the schools?" Even if we know we are hurting students, we continue the practice so that the system can operate. We seem to be in some sort of denial regarding the trauma we are causing students.

Asking for more funding for schools dominates our lobbying and legislative activities and even our public relations. My concern is that more money is just going to be used to perpetuate the current system. And, if these presuppositions truly are symptomatic of the faulty foundation on which our schools are operating (as I believe they are), then more money will simply deter us from dealing with serious defects and we won’ t look for structural solutions.

Our whole grading system is based upon this presupposition including the threat of suspension, expulsion, and other radical punishments. The truth is that there are far better ways to motivate students that will fit into their natural motivation strategies. Natural motivation strategies which utilize the highly valued criteria of the student provides a win/win situation that offers valued and motivating choices.

So many times I have had students tell me that they were good at learning spelling words or vocabulary words, etc. And yet, in my experience, the student’ s learning strategy for these tasks was inadequate. When I would inquire further into how they were judging the success, I would find that they would be handing in assignments that did not contribute to the learning process but yet would be easy to do. For example, they would be asked to simply copy down each spelling word 10 times and hand it in. Or, asked to look up definitions of vocabulary words in the dictionary and copy them down and hand them in. When the student would do this boring task as asked, they would get high grades but very little learning would occur. Since most teachers are not trained in how the mind works or how learning occurs at the process level, they are left to assignments designed by textbook publishers. NLP has a golden opportunity to be a major force in teaching others how learning best occurs.

We are a society accustomed to placing blame or finding who is at fault when something goes wrong. Unfortunately, when a student is doing poorly in school we almost automatically blame him or her. Usually, we accuse the student of not studying hard enough, or of not being motivated, or of being lazy, or of being rebellious or stupid. Many times we will label them with some form of learning disability. After a while, when the feedback becomes overwhelming, the student starts to believe the labels and it affects their self esteem in a devastating way.

The reason I include this is not to demean great teachers but because it takes away from where the real responsibility lies in the learning process-- with the student. Also, believing that it depends upon finding the right teacher keeps us from solving the real problems that are limiting our schools. Besides, if we did change the presuppositions that form the foundation for how we conduct our schools and how we treat each other, the great teachers would really be empowered and could do their job even better.

SOME EMPOWERING PRESUPPOSITIONS

So, if our schools operate out of faulty presuppositions, what would be some different presuppositions that would empower students, teachers, administrators, and parents? I am sure I will find some more, but when I have envisioned our schools operating out of the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) presuppositions, the shifts at all logical levels are incredible.

Imagine for yourself, by going second position at all logical levels, what it would be like to be in a school system operating out of the following presuppositions as a student, a teacher, a school official, a parent, or the public at large:

1. All behavior has a positive intention behind it.

2. There is no such thing as failure, there is only feedback.

3. We choose the best behavior based upon the choices we know and our model of the world.

4. More choice is better than limited choice.

5. If it is possible in the world, it is possible for me to learn

6. Anything can be learned if it is chunked properly.

7. The map is not the territory, it is only a perceptual filter.

I led a group of Master NLP Practitioners through this exercise and we all agreed if we could just get the first presupposition into our schools, it would have a transforming effect on us and our schools. If all of them were Implemented, there would not be chronic frustration and anger. There would be only VERY capable teachers, students, parents, administrators, and the public at large focused on helping everybody achieve their highest potential. Now, imagine what the world becomes as these students graduate, become parents and enter the workplace and take leadership positions. AWESOME!!! We would be truly helping to make the world a better place to live.

About the Author

Don A. Blackerby, Ph.D. is a former math teacher and college dean and founded SUCCESS SKILLS in 1981 in order to focus on using NLP in helping struggling students in school. In 1996, he wrote a book “Rediscover the Joy of Learning” in which he describes his NLP based strategies and processes on how he helps struggling students including those who have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Don is not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or medical doctor, he is an educator who is certified in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and practices as a Personal Development and Academic Coach. On a spiritual path he is an ordained minister and registered in the State of Oklahoma. He may be contacted in various ways. His address and phone numbers are: SUCCESS SKILLS, 1517 Walnut Cove Road, Edmond, OK 73013, USA. His phone number is 1-405-330-0164. His fax is 1-405-330-0167. His E-mail is info@nlpok.com . He also has a web site: www.nlpok.com .