Shouting at children doesn't work

I'd like to share the article by Paul Dix, an expert in Behaviour Management who explains why shouting at children is counterproductive for learning.

Fight or Flight


The Amygdala is a small nut-shaped object that sits in the middle of your limbic brain and controls your response to threat signals. In a very real sense, we have two minds – an emotional mind and a rational mind – but the emotional mind is dominant. It responds quickly to signals and sends out hormones to stop the rational brain thinking, deliberately. Man sees a snake, before the man can work out whether the snake is a dangerous one, whether it’s about to rear up and bite him, the Amygdala triggers. It sends blood rushing to the hands to fight and rushing to the legs to run and escape.



But also – and this is the bit that teachers aren’t told – it releases a small burst of hormones into the rational brain, the bit behind your forehead, the prefrontal cortex and it stops rational thinking. Because if I am faced with a dangerous snake, I don’t need the slow lumbering thought of rational brain; I need immediate and responsive reaction of the emotional brain. The rational brain says well perhaps you should look in your I-Spy book of dangerous snakes, Paul. Is it black on red that kills you or red on black? And by that time you’ve had it. The emotional brain stops rational thought deliberately. You’re walking down the canal with a young child who slips and falls into the canal. Your rational brain says it’s a little bit chilly in that canal this morning maybe I need a wetsuit and I’ve got my phone on me. By that time, it’s too late. Of course, your emotional brain then kicks in, stops rational thought and you dive straight into the water to save the child.

From birth we are conditioned to recognize that a smile is safety and security and a non-smile is a threat signal. Something as small as a screwed up face, irritated reaction in a classroom can provoke that emotional reaction in children. It doesn’t have to be a life or death situation. And, in fact, the Amygdala is not fully formed until you are 25 years old. So we really are dealing with young people with a developing emotional mind.

Anything that’s put into the Amygdala between the ages of nought and eight is fixed. You can’t just pluck it out. Children who have had very difficult early childhood experiences cannot be cleaned up and started afresh. You have to work with the child with those memories, which is why some children react to adults in a very odd way, in a very emotional way, in a very unexpected way, because their Amygdala is trained to look out for angry adults, shout-y adults, adults who show disinterest or annoyance at them. In the classroom, in the lab, in the studio, it’s critical that you understand that what’s going on very often is not personal and directed at you. It is part of the human condition, part of a child misreading a threat signal from a teacher and reacting inappropriately.

Once you start to understand that little burst of hormones that blocks the rational brain, you begin to understand why shouting at children, why raising your voice at them, humiliating them or spinning them into an emotional crisis is so counterproductive for great learning.


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