I’ve never really thought of any other elements being essential for survival until learning about Choice Theory. However, Choice Theory makes too much sense for it not to be true! In this module, I’ve learned that we need much more to survive than just food and shelter. William Glasser believed that we all have a need for fun, power, freedom, and belonging and that we need these things in order to survive.
I first looked at the PowerPoint which I found to be very helpful in understanding Choice Theory. When I was prompted to come up with a meaningful learning experience, one automatically popped into my mind. While I did not come up with the same words as the four basic psychological needs, my learning experience fits into all four categories. My high school hosted a preschool program in which high school students could teach the preschoolers math, social studies, science, art, and story telling. This entire program was a great learning experience for me that fulfilled all of the basic needs in a classroom. I had a tremendous amount of fun teaching the preschoolers and the course was definitely challenging as well as interesting. Each week we had to research lesson plans and then create the lesson to teach to the preschoolers the following week. Finding an appropriate lesson and putting it together was challenging at times. However, we did have a lot of freedom in choosing our lessons. Each week there was a different theme and we were assigned a subject and we were allowed to work from there. We were given the responsibility and we were trusted to construct an appropriate and effective lesson. Our freedom within the class led to concept of our need for power. The class gave all of the teacher’s confidence in our abilities to teach as well as a sense of achievement as we concluded our lesson plan. Each of these basic needs lead to the one I find to be the most important: belonging. Through this class I connected to not only my peers but also the students I taught. I gained many friendships and perhaps the most important aspect was that of ‘give and receive’. I feel as if I have learned just as much, if not more, from the students I taught as they may have learned from me.
I found the article “School Violence from the Perspective of William Glasser” to be a very interesting one. I certainly agree with the idea that all schools should have some type of violence prevention program. However, I believe that this should be paired with enhanced security systems for the greatest degree of student protection. While he raised many good points, I disagreed with some ideas he presented. First, I felt like he used many stereotypes in order to support his beliefs. In the first page of the article, Glasser referred to all unhappy and violent students as a boy or man. Glasser eventually refrains from stereotyping just men later in this article by clarifying that girls are more likely to be unhappy, but boys are more likely to be violent. Shortly after he made that statement, he continues to stereotype women he worked with into two separate categories. The first group he defined as “the girls we knew from their records had history of violence or had a way of dressing or wearing their hair that provoked negative attention in our school” (2). His second group of girls were those who “were most in touch with what was going on in school. They knew who was unhappy and what the unhappiness was about”. Despite these few stereotypes found throughout the article, I believe that there were much more positives than negatives.
I definitely agree with his statement that there should be one counselor per every 1,000 students (as there was in my high school). Also, his thoughts on relating to and connecting with others were very thought provoking. Glasser believed that without a meaningful relationship, problems become present in the family, marriage, school and workplace. In order to avoid these problems, we need to avoid his seven deadly habits. Glasser states, “[t]he world is dominated bye what I call the seven deadly habits of external control psychology – criticizing, blaming, complaining, nagging, threatening, punishing, and bribing” (3). Choice Theory is based off of the notion that we are internally motivated. This belief rests on the idea that all external motivations (such as the seven deadly habits) do not make us do anything. We are supposed to have control over our behavior and ultimately we do things based on internal motivation.
I believe our internal motivation is driven by our desire for the four basic needs William Glasser outlined for us. For what other reason do we find learning experiences to be memorable without the feeling of fun, freedom, belonging, and power? I would say those four cover each of every one’s needs.
