The best way to teach is to praise positive actions and ignore negative ones Specific Task Instruction Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take

Teaching is a tricky and meaningful pursuit because all the young kids growing up need good guidance in order to grown into responsible human beings and cultivated citizens so they can not only realize their own dreams but also contribute to the society and to make the world a better place. The statement argues that the best way of teaching is to praise positive behaviors while ignoring negative ways. While praising good behavior will increase a person’s good behaviors in the future, I disagree with the belief that negative behaviors should be ignore. Instead, I argue that the best way of teaching is to praise positive behaviors while recognizing negative behaviors in people and tell them why their actions are good or bad. Let me explain why.

Firstly, praising good behaviors will lead to more positive behaviors but ignoring bad behaviors would hamper people’s healthy personal development. Positive behaviors are defined as merits like respect, inclusiveness, hard-working, honesty, kindness, being on time and so on, all of which would do good both to oneself and others. Negative behaviors like procrastination, infidelity, cheating, plagiarism, bullying, malicious derision, disrespect, and so on are deleterious aspects that not only harm oneself but also hurt others.
For school teachers, they not only should praise students’ good behaviors in order to encourage them to do more good things in class and outside school, but also pay attention to mistakes they have made. However small as procrastination or large as plagiarism, no one should ignore the impact a bad behavior can cause. If a teacher only praises a student without telling him/her what he/she has not done right, his/her bad behaviors would offset his/her merits since bad behaviors lead to more bad behaviors. If a student is joyful and often bring happiness to people around him/her, teachers should encourage him/her to continue doing so. But what if this student cheated in exams? Should teachers ignore this infringement of school integrity and still praise the student? Of course not. Since the student has violated school rules, it is ultimately right to alarm the student of his/her mistakes in cheating. Sometimes, punishment for the student like writing a reflection paper or giving an F to the student for a class he/she cheated on is needed because punishment can help the student recognize the consequence of his/her violation, thus decreasing the chance of him/her cheating again. Furthermore, teachers should articulate why cheating is bad in school and outside school when the student graduates - cheating violates school rules, makes other students feel unfair about exams, set negative examples for students, and even harms one’s mental health and lead to a deceitful personality. Only by recognizing the bad consequences of cheating can a student learn from the mistakes he/she has made and to avoid making that same mistake again. Thus, teachers should alarm a person when he/she has a negative behavior while recognizing his/her good behaviors.

Secondly, while praising can help people feel good about themselves, ignoring bad behaviors would lead to unexpected outcomes that would have detrimental effect on people’s lives and even the society. When a good behavior is encouraged, more people tend to engage in doing good deeds to people around them. However, if a bad action is ignored, one who has done something bad will continue harming oneself and others without an end, leading to accumulated detrimental effects. Once there was a kid name Freak who was once a good person but became a robber when he was 20. How could this happen? So, when he was 6, he stole some pencils from a local store because his family was poor so he could save money. While recognizing the good behavior that Freak wanted to save some money, their parents failed to tell Freak that stealing was bad. Later, when Freak stole food from local supermarkets, their parents still praised Freak’s so-called “frugal” behaviors while ignoring what bad consequences stealing could do to Freak. This accumulated harmful praise and ignorance of bad conducts led Freak to believe that stealing was advantageous, so he one day arranged a gang to rob a local bank. He was unfortunately caught by the police and sent to jail. When his parents were crying, Freak was angry. He said to his parents that “why didn’t you punish me when I first stole pencils back then? Otherwise I wouldn’t know that stealing would be caught until now!!” But everything was late even though their parents finally realized that stealing, as a negative behavior, could not be tolerated and they instead should cultivate good behaviors while telling their kids that he should never conduct bad things again. From this anecdote, I advocate for the equal attention toward good and bad behaviors.

In conclusion, I disagree with the statement that negative behaviors ought be ignore. Conversely, I argue that, the best way of teaching is to praise good behaviors while recognizing bad behaviors so people, no longer kids or adults, would never do bad things again. If teachers can narrate why good things are helpful and bad things are detrimental, kids and adults would benefit more.