Canter elaborates on the virtue of persistence and consistency:
Children may not care if you keep them after school once, suspend them every now and then, or send them to the corner infrequently. But there are few children who would not care if they knew that they would have to stay after school every day they chose to, even if it meant five days straight. There are few children who would not care if they knew they would be suspended every time they acted out, even if it meant three straight days of suspension. There are few children who would not care if they knew you would send them to a corner for their inappropriate behavior every time they chose to go, even if it meant five times a day.
What we are trying to say is this: if you really care, the children will really care. If you are prepared to use any means necessary and appropriate to influence the children to eliminate their inappropriate behavior they will sense your determination and quickly care about the consequences which they will have to face consistently if they choose to act inappropriately. (Canter & Canter, 2001, pp. 109–110)
Almost any behavior we really want to get, we can get if we have the deter- mination because we do have the power. Does this mean that if one keeps delivering consequences persistently, the behavior is sure to change? First, it is possible to deliver a consequence over and over again consistently and have no effect. That can happen if the consequence is not strong enough, or if it some- how turns out to be a reward for the child. It can also happen if the behavior comes from a physical cause, ignorance, or a value clash. Second, the way in which the consequence was delivered in Canter’s scenario had a lot to do with its success. The teacher did not blame, criticize, or humiliate the student; she simply, but promptly, went up to him, noted the behavior (“You pushed Sol”), and delivered the consequence (“You have chosen to go home for the rest of the day”). She pointed out that going home was the child’s choice, in this case, since he knew that pushing Sol would lead to that. Thus the teacher reacts with matter-of-fact emotion rather than anger. It is, in fact, easier to react that way when you know precisely what you are going to do. That knowledge (versus the helpless feeling when dealing with a child who seems outside your control) gives a teacher both confidence and calm, which allows for better judgments. So being persistent with consequences can also fail if the consequence is not delivered in the right way.
The specific technique described in Canter’s scenario is a strong one: systematic exclusion of a student to eliminate particularly disruptive and persistent behav- ior. But it can be very effective. Seymour Sarason (1996) describes another pow-
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erful exclusion technique (a time-out in a colleague’s classroom) that works without families or contracts. It relies on the cooperation of another teacher into whose room the child is sent for exclusion. The host teacher has a special place the student goes to that is not fun and where the student does work (see Consequence 11 on pages 167–170).