Watching this video I felt as traumatized as the children did! It is alarming how quickly the change occurred in how the children treated each other. The teacher was so convincing and it was amazing to see her manage/manipulate the situation. This was someone they trusted and they willingly let her dictate the new ways of interacting as a class. No one stood up to her authority. The look of horror, humiliation, and inferiority on the faces of the children spoke volumes. The fact that it negatively affected their performance on academic tasks is not surprising. People of color face these same obstacles in academic situations ... and everyday life. Once I was in a class that did a similar experiment with positive and negative reinforcement. It is not a surprise that those who received positive reinforcement accomplished a task with much more ease and in a shorter period of time than those who received negative reinforcement.
