PCT, Reality Therapy & RTP

Perceptual Control Theory, Reality Therapy & the Responsible Thinking Process Ž

Tom Bourbon, with extensive help from Caroline Bourbon Young

Houston, Texas, USA, 17 October 1997

On Ed Ford's computer net, respthink, a "frequently asked question" (FAQ) goes something like this, "Isn't RTP (the responsible thinking process) the same as William Glasser's 'control theory' (which Glasser renamed 'choice theory' in 1996)?" A variation on the question confuses RTP with perceptual control theory (PCT) and asks whether PCT isn't the same as Glasser's "theory." Ed Ford answers the FAQ as a counselor and a former teacher. Ed tries to use ideas from PCT as the foundation for his RTP, which is a discipline program for home and school. I answer the question as a behavioral scientist who, for more than 24 years, has helped to develop PCT as a formal, quantitative, scientific theory of behavior. I have done that in collaboration with Bill Powers, who developed PCT in the 1950s, and with some of Bill's other colleagues. In my work with PCT, I have conducted behavioral research and computer modeling. For 25 years, I taught in a university department of psychology. For 19 of those years, I taught PCT as the major topic in all of my courses. One area of psychology that I studied as a student, and taught as a professor, was the history of psychology. Consequently, I am familiar with Glasser's "reality therapy," and with the ways it is related to psychology, in general, and to PCT, in particular.

The FAQ raises many issues, all of which are important to an understanding of PCT, and of Ed Ford's RTP. My answer occurs in four parts. The first part covers brief histories of Powers's perceptual control theory, Glasser's reality therapy, and the interaction between them. Part two describes some of the major differences between Powers's PCT, and Glasser's "control theory." Part three contains a history of Ed Ford's work and of William Glasser's reality therapy and control theory. Part four contains a comparison of certain features of Ed Ford's responsible thinking process, and William Glasser's quality schools and choice theory.

Part 1. A very brief history of PCT and RT/CT

Powers and PCT: In the early 1950s, William T. Powers made the brilliant observation that people behave to deliberately control many, but not all, of their own perceptions of the world. A person who acts on the world to control his or her own perceptions must affect parts of the world. From outside that person, we observers can see some of the environmental variables that the person affects. From our vantage point outside the other person, we see events and relationships and processes that would ordinarily vary, but that are controlled by the person, which is to say the person keeps those events and relationships and processes at some predetermined state or condition. A car hurtling along the road at a high speed would soon end up in a ditch, or against a tree, or crashing into another car, except for the actions of the driver. The driver keeps the car moving toward the destination he selects, along the route he selects, at the speed he selects, in the lane he selects, at his selected distance behind a car ahead. Think of all of the perceptions the driver controls while he is driving from one destination to another, and think of how very different those events in the world would be if the driver were not controlling those perceptions.

To explain how people control their perceptions, Powers developed "control system theory (CST)," which was the early name for what is now called perceptual control theory. The new name was adopted early in the 1990s, to distinguish Powers's theory from the many incorrect ideas that some people had come to call "control theory." Glasser's "control theory" was one of those incorrect versions. In his theory, Powers said that people specify (select, determine, intend) part of what they perceive happening in the world. They compare what they actually perceive against what they intend to perceive. If there is no discrepancy or difference (called "perceptual error") between actual and intended perceptions, the person does not act to change the world; but if there is a discrepancy (a "perceptual error), the person acts to eliminate the error. People behave to eliminate, or prevent, differences between actual and intended perceptions. (Much of Powers's earlier writing is available in two edited collections: William T. Powers (Ed.), Living Control Systems I (Previously Published Papers), 1989; and William T. Powers (Ed.), Living Control Systems II (Previously Unpublished Papers), 1992. Both books are available from, Benchmark Publications, New Canaan, Connecticut.)

Powers developed an elegantly simple mathematical model that explains the process of perceptual control. In 1973, more than 20 years after he began his work on PCT, Powers published a book, Behavior: The Control of Perception (known as BCP), and a companion article, "Feedback: Beyond Behaviorism," in the journal, Science. (BCP was published by Aldine, in Chicago; it is also available from Benchmark Publications, in New Canaan, Connecticut.) In 1973, I read BCP and the article in Science, and I became part of the small group of behavioral scientists who have worked to develop PCT, by behavioral research, and by computer modeling. PCT is a formal, quantitative theory of behavior and it is radically different from any major traditional theory in the behavioral, social, or cognitive sciences, or in the life sciences. At the core of PCT is a testable model of behavior, not just a system of ideas that Powers "believes." Any time we think there is a way to change the theory, to make it better, we test the changes, to see if they produce the specific results we thought they would. If the results are not what we expected, we must reject the proposed change, no matter how appealing it seemed -- no matter how much we might have liked it. Proposed changes to the basic PCT model are accepted only if they produce demonstrated improvements in the way the model works.

Glasser and RT/CT: William Glasser is an M.D., and a psychiatrist. In 1965, he published a book in which he described his "reality therapy (RT)," which is a kind of psychiatric therapy. For many years, I taught about RT, as one of the many kinds of psychiatric therapy. I have always thought that RT was more sensible and humane than many other psychiatric therapies. I believe RT belongs in a group with several other therapies that are present-centered, rather than centered on events in the client's past. In all of the present-centered therapies, the client is described as an active agent, capable of changing his or her own life, in the present.

William Glasser is a psychiatrist, not a scientist, even though as a very young man he did study chemical engineering. I say that as a fact, not a criticism. At the beginning, Glasser had no scientific theory to explain RT. He discovered Powers's 1973 publications about CST. Glasser asked Powers to explain CST to him, and he decided that CST explained RT. In 1981, Glasser published his book, Stations of the Mind. It included a "foreword" by Powers. In that book, Glasser introduced his own version of what he called "control theory." It bore only slight resemblance to Powers's theory. In 1984, Glasser published a book called, Control Theory, and from then until 1996, the phrase "control theory" was prominent in most of Glasser's writings, and in the name of his institute. During all that time, Glasser claimed that he had developed CT and improved it far beyond what Powers had done. Those claims are not justified, not for scientific control theory.

Glasser never realized that what he called "control theory" was in fact a non-functional verbal statement of his own beliefs about behavior. Glasser's CT was not, in any way, a formal, testable, scientific theory of behavior. It was never intended to be such a theory. In fact, when a formal model of behavior is organized according to Glasser's verbalizations, the model cannot function in anything like the way Glasser believes it would. To the degree that reality therapy works in psychiatry, or the Quality School program works in schools, they cannot work solely for the reasons Glasser stated in his "control theory." For example, as an aid to understanding how his CT explains therapy, Glasser, like PCT scientists, uses the example of a person driving a car. However, where PCT scientists model the successful driver as a person who has learned which of her perceptions to control, by means of whatever behavior is necessary, I believe Glasser would say she is successful because she has learned to select and control her behavior, so that she makes the "real world" match a "picture in her mind." The significance of the differences between those two explanations is the subject of Part 2.

Part 2: A Comparison of PCT and CT/RT

In Part 1, I summarized the history of PCT, which was started by William Powers in the 1950s, and I described how, in the 1980s, William Glasser began to use a nonfunctional version of PCT to explain his popular and effective reality therapy. I also made a brief comparison between PCT and Glasser's ideas. In Part 2, I will make a more detailed comparison between the two ideas. In Parts 3 and 4, I will show some implications of those differences, as they play out in Ed Ford's and Bill Glasser's approaches to working with students.

I struggled to find the best way to compare PCT and Glasser's ideas. There are so many issues to address that a comparison is not easy. Finally, I decided to quote Glasser's words from his "introduction" to, "Programs, Policies & Procedures of the William Glasser Institute." I quote from the issue Glasser revised on 9/96 and distributed to his devotees. Following each quote, I contrast what Glasser said with ideas in PCT.

A. Definitions of "behavior"

Glasser: "Choice Theory attempts to explain both the psychological and physiological behavior of all living creatures. In Choice theory, these two aspects of behavior are combined and called, Total Behavior."

"This theory maintains that all we do from birth to death is behave, and all of our behavior is Total Behavior. Total Behavior is made up of four components, acting, thinking, feeling and the physiology, which always accompanies the other three components."

Bourbon: There is nothing new to the idea that, in humans, processes like those Glasser identifies as "thinking, acting, feeling and physiology" occur together. Even many die-hard radical behaviorists would agree with that idea. Therefore, the idea that many things are going on at the same time offers no support for the uniqueness of choice theory.

Remember that Glasser said his CT is supposed to explain the behavior of all living creatures. I am unable to imagine what kind of evidence Glasser might use to support the idea that slugs, bacteria and amoebae always, "act, think and feel," along with their physiology.

We also intend for PCT to explain the behavior of all living things. In PCT, behavior is understood as the means by which a living system controls its perceptions, however simple they may be, of the states of certain variables in the world. In PCT, we do not assume that every action is accompanied by subjective states of thinking and feeling. In the formal mathematical model for PCT, there are only "signals," that can vary in magnitude, and "functions," that receive input signals and compute output signals. In the formal model, there is no necessity to assume that what we call "perception" reaches "conscious" subjective awareness, although it is obvious that many human perceptions reach that level. In a bacterium like Escherichia coli, there are internal chemical "signals" that are proportional to the concentrations of various substances in the environment. E. coli behaves to control the magnitudes of those signals, making some increase, and others decrease. In PCT, we treat those chemical "signals" like perceptions, and we use the same basic model, to explain how E. coli controls those simple perceptions, that we use to explain how people control their subjective experiences of the loudness of a radio, or the size of their bank accounts.

B. "Choice" of behavior

Glasser: "Choice Theory explains that all Total Behavior is chosen and all the choices are an ongoing attempt to change the real world so that it coincides with a small, simulated world that we build into our memory called the Quality World."

Bourbon: First, in PCT we recognize that living things do not chose their behavioral actions. Rather, they chose which perceptions should occur, then their actions vary in any way necessary to create the selected perceptions, and to defend them against changes that might otherwise be produced by independent disturbances from the environment. We have demonstrated that a system that selects its behavioral actions in advance cannot possibly select and control any intended consequences of its actions. Consider a person driving a car. Can the driver select, before the fact of driving over a particular stretch of road, the specific movements of hands and feet that will be needed to manipulate the steering wheel, the gas pedal, and other devices in the car? Of course not. It is impossible to drive that way, unless, of course, one is deliberately courting disaster. Instead, the driver decides, in advance, on which perceptions will occur -- the perceived route, speed, acceptable proximity to other cars, and other aspects of the trip -- then the driver behaves, as needed, to create and defend those intended perceptions.

Second, an organism does not directly perceive "the real world." All an organism "knows" directly are its own perceptions. PCT uses models that portray living systems as acting to control some of their own perceptions, often by acting on the external world. But an organism "knows" the world only as perceptions, not as something that is independent of perceptions and more real than them. Among perceptual control theorists, a favorite saying used to summarize our interpretation of behavior is, "It's all perception."

This brings us to a summary of some clear differences between Glasser's ideas and those in PCT. Glasser says that an organism selects its behaviors so as to make the real world match the organism's "picture" of what the real world should be. In PCT, we say that an organism behaves, any way necessary, as demanded by immediate circumstances, to make its perceptions of the world match the perceptions the organism intends. In the document from which I quoted, Glasser requires, first, that an organism experience the world just as it is, and second, that the organism select in advance its actions that will make the real world match the organism's pictures of an ideal world. PCT requires, first, that the organism decide which perceptions it will have of some part of the world, then, if there is a discrepancy between what it intends to perceive and what it does perceive, the organism acts, in any way that is sufficient to eliminate the discrepancy. PCT does not require that the organism directly perceive the "real world."

C. "Needs"

Glasser: William Glasser says the "Quality World" is built, ". . . starting shortly after birth, from all we have perceived that feels very good. What feels very good is anything we do that satisfies, or in the case of addictions, seems to satisfy one or more of five basic needs built into our genetic structure: survival, love, belonging, power, freedom and fun." (Emphases in the original)

Bourbon: The idea that organisms are born with a fixed set of "needs," that serve to motivate or energize their behavior, has a long, and vexed, history in philosophy and psychology. Theorists have often claimed that needs are a product of our nature, genes, structure, anatomy and physiology, or some other internal predisposing factor. They have claimed that we have needs numbering between one, and many hundreds. When they say there is one, it is usually called a, "need for survival." When there are hundreds . . . I will not bother you with that. When there are five, they might be, or might not be, assigned the same names that Glasser uses. There is no scientific reason for anyone to accept Glasser's list of five hypothesized "needs" as having any more reality than any of the many other lists advanced over the centuries. In my visits to schools during the past two years, I have encountered several discipline programs whose creators argue that there are more, or fewer, needs than Glasser claims, and the names of the needs are not always the same. In fact, Glasser's count of the genetically-programmed basic needs varies from publication to publication; in a 1997 article in the Phi Delta Kappan, he says there are four. The multiplicity of numbers and names for alleged "needs" reflects the individual preferences of the authors, rather than something that we all share because it is built into each of us by our common genetic heritage. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support William Glasser's claim that there are five (or is it four) needs like the ones that he proposes.

William Glasser's "needs" are abstract words. It is extremely unlikely that any of the projects to identify the entire genome of a species, like the human genome project or the E. coli genome project, will locate a gene, or a set of genes, for anything so abstract as a, "need for survival," much less for needs like power, or freedom, or fun and belonging.

In PCT, we work with the idea of physiological "needs," or requirements, that are generally recognized in biological science, like the required concentrations of certain nutrients and gasses in the blood, or the required temperature at the core of the brain. We treat those required physiological levels as though they were reference perceptions, specified in systems that control the magnitudes of perceptual signals that are related to actual physiological conditions. In other words, we construct our model of "physiological regulation" (which is sometimes called "homeostasis") as though it were an example of perceptual control. We also construct our models of "more abstract, higher-level" perceptions, like those for "belonging," or "love," as though they, too, were examples of perceptual control, with people behaving to make the perceptions be the way they want them. The phenomenon of "survival" is probably an example of something that simply happens as an unintended side effect, whenever an organism successfully controls all of the physiologically specified conditions. There is no convincing evidence that survival depends on an independent "need," or "instinct," or "drive."

D. Internal motivation

Glasser: "Therefore, all behavior is internally motivated. This means that Choice Theory is diametrically opposed to the traditional, externally motivated, common sense psychology of the world, Stimulus-Response (S-R) Theory. Since our motivation is completely intrinsic, the only behavior we can control is our own."

Bourbon: The idea that behavior is internally motivated runs as one of two uninterrupted and competing themes, through the entire history of philosophy, from ancient to modern. The other thread asserts that the environment controls behavior. The same two themes run through the entire history of psychology. Glasser cannot legitimately say the concept of internal motivation is unique to choice theory.

The concept of internal motivation is central to nearly all major cognitive theories, neurological theories and neuro-cognitive theories. That concept, alone, is inadequate to explain behavior. The inadequacy springs from the fact that, like Glasser, most people who appeal to "internal motivation" as an explanation believe that individuals select, plan and control their own behavior. That is not what people do. They control their own perceptions. To do that, they allow their behavior to vary, any way that is necessary, given the varying conditions of the world.

In all of his writings, William Glasser contrasts his theory with "S-R theory." In fact, the issue is much bigger than that. All theories that try to explain behavior as the end product in a chain of causality are properly called "cause-effect theories." In all of those theories, some antecedent cause, whether in the environment, or inside the individual, causes behavior, as the end of the causal chain. No cause-effect theory can explain how a person controls his or her perceptions, by affecting events in the world. Only a circular-causal model, like the model in PCT, can explain the phenomenon of perceptual control.

E. I believe Glasser either misunderstood, or did not appreciate, what Powers taught him

Glasser: "For many years, I used the term Control Theory for what I am now calling Choice Theory. Even though I had always believed that we are intrinsically motivated, I learned from an exponent, William Powers, a theoretician, that there is an actual theory of this motivation called Control Theory. In order for Control Theory to work for me as a practicing psychiatrist, psychotherapist and educator, I made many changes in what Powers taught me." Glasser goes on to describe his changes: the development of his "five needs;" the idea of "Total Behavior;" the idea of the "Quality World;" deletion of Powers's idea that there are multiple levels of perception, which Glasser replaced with, "the much more usable perceptual filters -- the Total Knowledge Filter and the Valuing Filter;" and so on, until he says the following. "Finally, I replaced the concept of reorganization with creativity, because reorganization implies changing around what is already there. Creativity often means changing what is there to something totally new and more effective; for example, that the earth is round, not flat."

Bourbon: In this passage, I believe Glasser reveals that he never understood what Bill Powers said, way back when Powers explained control theory to him. What is more, I believe Glasser reveals that his approach to building a theory, or a model of behavior, is to make changes that he likes aesthetically; he changed control theory to match his preferences for the way it sounded. Apparently, he did not understand that control theory is a formal theory that makes specific quantitative predictions about what will happen, in certain circumstances. Those of us who recognize PCT as a scientific theory make changes in the theory only if they improve the predictive power of the theory, and never simply because they make PCT sound nicer. Changes like those Glasser made rendered the theory useless, for scientific work. I have no idea what Glasser is trying to say, in his passage about how he improved on the idea of "reorganization," which is a processes hypothesized in PCT as a way to explain many kinds of learning.

I believe that Glasser misunderstood, or did not appreciate, what Powers taught him. I believe the evidence on that point has been clear, for many years. In May, 1987, six years after he published his book, Stations of the Mind, Glasser said in an interview published in Phi Delta Kappan: "In the course of my research, I came across a book, Behavior: The Control of Perception, written by William T. Powers and published by Aldine Press in 1973. I found the book obscure and difficult to understand, but Powers was one of the first to give the concepts of control theory (which, at that time, were engineering concepts) a biological application. Working a little bit with Powers and a great deal on my own, I refined those ideas and applied them to human behavior." (p. 658) I accept Glasser's remark that he found BCP "difficult to understand;" evidence to support that claim is abundant. However, Glasser's characterization of the subject of Powers's book is patently false. From his earliest papers in the 1950s, through BCP in 1973, to the present, there is no doubt whatsoever that Powers wrote about human behavior. The day in 1973 when I read Powers's article in Science, I knew, immediately, that he had invented an original psychology for the behavior of all living things, which obviously includes human behavior. I believe Glasser's claim that Powers only applied control theory to biology, and he, Glasser, applied it to humans, at the very least reflects Glasser's failure to understand what he read and heard from Powers.

F. Glasser dissociates from PCT

Some readers probably doubt my claims that Glasser does not understand the natural phenomenon of control, in which organisms control their own experiences by affecting certain parts of the environment, and that he does not realize what we mean when we say PCT is a formal scientific theory to explain the phenomenon of control. For those doubters, I offer the following.

Glasser: "Considering that I have always taught that we choose all that we do, I decided in the spring of 1996 to call what I teach Choice Theory. I never liked the name, Control Theory, because it has implied external control. Also, since Powers and I teach so differently, I thought it misleading for me to continue to call what I teach Control Theory. Since I cannot remove the words Control Theory from all I have written, I ask you to read these words as Choice Theory. Everything else I have written that describes or explains this theory is still completely accurate. Changing the name makes it even more so."

Bourbon: There we have it all. Glasser repeats the mistaken idea that we choose, "all that we do," which, by his definition, means we choose our behavior. The paragraph begins with that assertion, and it ends with Glasser saying that, in spite of the new name for his "theory," everything he has ever written on the subject of how we choose our behavior is, "still completely accurate." Glasser should have said that everything he has written on that subject is still just as accurate as it ever was. The accuracy scale ranges from "zero" to "perfect."

I believe Glasser reveals a mistaken notion that perceptual control theory is like his control theory, in the sense that both are something that people can decide to teach, or not. For Glasser to renounce PCT would be like an aerospace engineer saying the physical laws of motion are just something that physicists teach, and she has decided to teach something different, something that she also uses when she designs airplanes. I would not want to fly in one of those planes.

I have always thought that Glasser's "Reality Therapy" was more humane and respectful of the client than many other types of psychiatric therapy. Along with Bill Powers, I believe Glasser could have made his therapy even more effective, had he been willing to modify the parts of RT that were inconsistent with PCT. Glasser had many opportunities to make those changes, but, instead, he made wholesale changes in his own version of control theory, until he finally changed the name and said he renounced any association with PCT. One result of Glasser's actions has been nearly two decades of confusion, during which many people discovered his non-scientific version of control theory and innocently believed it was a legitimate scientific theory.

Part 3. A brief history of Ed Ford's work and of Glasser's RT/CT

1950s -- 1960s:

William T. Powers and two colleagues began to develop control systems theory, which was later renamed perceptual control theory (PCT).

1965:

William Glasser published his book, Reality Therapy.

1969:

a. William Glasser published his book, Schools Without Failure. The book contains the basic elements of what Glasser eventually called his "10 Steps to Good Discipline."

b. Ed Ford began to work with Glasser. Obviously, Ed learned, taught and applied many of the ideas described in Glasser's books. Ed was a therapist in RT and became a trainer for RT.

1973:

William T. Powers published his book, Behavior: The Control of Perception, and an article, "Feedback: Beyond Behaviorism," in the journal, Science. (Research and publication on PCT continue to the present, but I will not include any more citations of that work in this document.)

1974:

Glasser published an article, "A New Look at Discipline," in, Learning: The Magazine for Creative Teaching. In it, he further developed his "10 Steps."

1977:

a. Glasser published an article, "10 Steps to Good Discipline," in, Today's Education: The Journal of the National Education Association. In it, he further refined his "10 Steps."

b. Ed Ford and Steven Englund published their book, For the Love of Children: A Realistic Approach to Raising Your Child (Anchor Press/Doubleday; now available from Brandt Publishing, Scottsdale, Arizona). In it, they acknowledged their debts to William Glasser. They relied heavily on techniques from Glasser's reality therapy. Scattered through the book are ideas similar to those in Glasser's "10 Steps."

1980:

a. I have heard that this was the year when someone gave Glasser a copy of Powers's book, Behavior: The Control of Perception, published in 1973. Before long, Glasser invited Powers to visit him, to explain control theory. In Parts 1 and 2 of this document, I discussed some of what ensued.

b. Naomi Glasser published her edited book, What Are You Doing?:Case Histories in Reality Therapy" (NY: Harper & Row). Ed Ford contributed two chapters.

1981:

a. William Glasser published his book, Stations of the Mind. In it, he began to add his own arbitrary and non-scientific revisions of control theory. Glasser is a medical doctor, but he tried to ground reality therapy, and his version of control theory, on ideas from pop-neurology, as when he said that, the five basic needs are located in the frontal lobes of the cerebral hemispheres. Even if we were to grant Glasser the existence of his "five basic needs," claims like that about the hemispheres are unverifiable. What is more, most of the basic physiological "needs" that scientists accept are associated with the brain stem, not with the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex.

b. Ed Ford was trained as a social worker. He is not a scientist, but in 1981 he suspected there was more to control theory than Glasser said. Ed began to doubt that William Glasser's interpretation of control theory was accurate and he began to communicate with Bill Powers. That was when I first heard of Ed Ford.

1982:

a. I organized the first meeting of people interested in Powers's control theory. Ed Ford was there. That gathering eventually led to the formation of the Control Systems Group (CSG).

b. Ed Ford still taught and used ideas found in Glasser's, Schools Without Failure, but Glasser began to move away from, or modify, some of those ideas. From all we can tell in his publications, William Glasser had already abandoned his own "10 Steps to Good Discipline."

1984:

William Glasser published his book, Control Theory: A New Explanation of How We Control Our Lives (originally, Take Effective Control of Your Life). In it, Glasser reiterated his idea that everyone shares the same basic needs, determined by our genes (p. 5; p. 9), but he also invited readers to add or subtract needs, as they saw fit (p. 16). All of that is rather strange. Are the same "five basic needs" really common to all people, or are they not? In this book the "10 Steps" are gone. All that remains of them is a little material about how children must learn rules and about how to get them to make plans when they have broken the rules.

Glasser said, "The purpose of this book is to help increase our knowledge by attempting to teach the control theory through which we attempt to satisfy our needs." (p. 18) That is a strange goal. Imagine that someone told you he wanted to teach you the gravitational theory through which you go to the refrigerator to take out the things you will eat for lunch. This is one of many instances where Glasser talks about a theory as something you do in all of your activities in daily life, rather than as an organized attempt to explain what you do. He says you do something called "control theory," rather than that control theory explains what you do. That confusion runs through all of Glasser's writings.

1986:

William Glasser published his book, Control Theory in the Classroom. In it, his presentation of control theory continued to deteriorate. He emphasized the importance of the basic needs and said that, "control theory explains that all of our behavior is always our best attempt at the time to satisfy at least five powerful forces which, because they are built into our genetic structure, are called basic needs." (p. 14) I gave a critique of that idea in Parts 1 and 2.

William Glasser began to describe teachers as "managers," in the sense of managers in business and industry. He said that, as managers, teachers are responsible for the happiness of every child in their classes. If the teacher has identified which needs are not met for each child, and if the teacher arranges the classroom so that all of those needs are met for all of the children, then the classroom will be perfect and there will be no need for discipline. It is obvious that Glasser was moving to the idea that teachers are accountable for everything that happens in the classroom, an idea identical to the one at the core of behavior-management programs that rely on theoretical support from operant conditioning and S-R theory.

1987:

a. Ed Ford wrote his book, Love Guaranteed (San Francisco: Harper & Row. Now available from Brandt Publishing, Scottsdale, Arizona). In it, he demonstrated the results of his attempt to understand PCT, and to incorporate principles from PCT in his counseling practice.

b. By this time, the differences between Ed Ford and William Glasser were becoming strikingly clear. Glasser continued to modify his non-scientific version of control theory, to his own aesthetic ends. In contrast to Glasser, Ed Ford labored diligently to improve his understanding of PCT and to modify his own practice accordingly. Naturally, Ed continued to use many clinical techniques he learned from Glasser, but he understood that those techniques provided him a way to interact with people as living perceptual control systems, whose behavior varies any way that is necessary to control their own perceptions. On his side, Glasser moved further into the idea that people are need-driven creatures who select and plan their behavior.

1989:

Ed Ford wrote his book, Freedom From Stress (Scottsdale, Arizona: Brandt Publishing). In it, Ford gave evidence of further developments in his understanding of PCT, as it applied to his counseling practice. By this time, I was using Ed's two books about PCT and counseling in my experimental psychology classes at the university. I had students read one of the books at the start of the semester, as a "teaser." Ed's writing style is conversational and non-threatening. Most of my students (graduate and undergraduate) "took the bait." They liked the practical techniques Ford described, and they got a small dose of PCT. During the remainder of the semester, I would always refer back to Ford's clinical examples, while I led my students through the technical details of scientific PCT, including experiments and exercises in computer modeling of perceptual control. I must report that, years later, more students remember, and use, ideas from Ford's books, than remember the technical details I worked so hard to get across to them!

1990:

William Glasser wrote his book, The Quality School: Managing Students Without Coercion. The title reveals that Glasser had moved even further from anything that resembles scientific control theory, toward the idea that teachers are managers, like those in business and industry. Glasser had discovered and become enthralled with the work on management by W. Edwards Deming. Even more than in his book, Control Theory in the Classroom, he laid the responsibility squarely on teachers, to identify, and to meet, the needs of all students in their classrooms. I will say more about his specific suggestions for discipline in Part 4.

1993:

William Glasser wrote his book, The Quality School Teacher. From a scientific point of view, his presentation of control deteriorated even further. He said, "Control theory explains that we will work hard for those we care for (belonging), for those we respect and who respect us (power), for those with whom we laugh (fun), for those who allow us to think and act for ourselves (freedom), and for those who help us make our lives secure (survival)." (p. 30) I confess that I do not see at all why some relationships Glasser described in that passage should be labeled with the particular names of "needs" that he selected. Only William Glasser's version of control theory would "explain" what he described in that passage. From the perspective of PCT, the ideas in the passage are arbitrary assertions and are not at all representative of what we know about people, viewed as living perceptual control systems.

Glasser says very little about discipline in this book. Problems are supposed to disappear from the school when teachers recognize and meet all needs for all students.

1994:

a. Ed Ford started his "Responsible Thinking Process" (RTP) at Clarendon School, in Phoenix, Arizona. Ford tried to use principles from PCT to guide the development of RTP, and he used ideas from PCT to interpret the effects of RTP. It is clear that many features of RTP are similar to Glasser's earlier "10 Steps to Good Discipline." That is not surprising, given Ed Ford's long association with reality therapy, during the years when Glasser taught and used the "10 Steps." However, the distribution of responsibility and accountability in Ed Ford's process differs sharply from that in William Glasser's current program of Quality Schools and choice theory. (I will say more about that in Part 4.) What is more, by the early 1980s, Glasser had abandoned the "10 steps," and in 1996, he renounced them altogether. In effect, Ed Ford revived an impressive discipline process that had been abandoned, and he made it even more successful.

b. Ed Ford wrote his book, Discipline for Home and School, to describe RTP and its effects at Clarendon School. Bill Powers wrote the "foreword." On the cover of the book, Ed describes his program as, "Teaching children to respect the rights of others through responsible thinking based on perceptual control theory."

1995:

News about RTP spread. Ed Ford began to teach people at schools in several states how to use his program.

1996:

a. In January, as a representative of the scientific side of PCT, I traveled to Arizona to observe schools that used RTP. I went specifically to look for any evidence (a) that RTP actually produced positive changes in schools, and (b) that RTP had anything at all to do with PCT. I was satisfied on both counts. I obtained a two-year grant to visit schools that use RTP and to study the effectiveness of the program. Under the grant, I also work with Ed Ford to improve the program and to introduce as much of PCT into RTP as is practicable.

b. Drawing on information gathered during visits to schools with me, Ed Ford wrote his book, Discipline for Home and School, Book Two: Program Standards for Schools. In the book, Ed described features of RTP that were found in every school where the program worked very well. He also described practices that led to RTP not working in some schools.

c. Using ideas from Book Two as his criteria, Ed Ford began to certify schools that used RTP effectively. He also began to certify the administrators and teachers directly responsible for RTP in successful schools.

d. William Glasser visited Australia and discovered that many people in schools there were not using his Quality School program the way he intended. In a flurry of letters, newsletters, and policy statements, he renounced all discipline programs, including his own "10 Steps to Good Discipline" that he had stopped using by the early 1980s. He rejected all associations between his own work and Powers's PCT, and renamed his own theory as "choice theory." Glasser says that, whenever you read something that he wrote earlier, you should read the words "control theory" as "choice theory." Glasser established a new institute, named after himself. He required that anyone who wanted to become a member must renounce all discipline programs and all ties to PCT. In Parts 1 and 2, I described other changes that Glasser initiated in his program in 1996.

e. In the Winter, 1996, issue of The William Glasser Institute Newsletter, Glasser announced that he is working on a new book, Choice Theory, a New Psychology for a New Century.

1997:

a. More than 40 schools, in at least nine states, use Ed Ford's RTP. During the summer, he conducted workshops on RTP, in Australia, and presented information about RTP at conferences in St. Louis, Missouri, and Houston, Texas. He hosted his second annual workshop on RTP, in Phoenix, Arizona. Many people who attended his workshop also attended the annual meeting of the Control Systems Group, in Durango, Colorado.

b. Several people who were associated with William Glasser for many years, including some who were individually rejected by him in 1996, declined his invitation to join the new William Glasser Institute. Instead, they formed the International Association for Applied Control Theory. In October, 1997, we do not know how the new association will define "control theory."

c. The Australian Reality Therapy Newsletter, Volume 9, Number 1, 1997, includes "A Message From Dr. William Glasser, To All Faculty, The Quality School Consortium Board and All Members of the Consortium." In the newsletter, Glasser repeats a now-frequent lament, "I deeply regret ever using my own reality therapy ideas to create the 'ten steps of discipline.' It was an honest mistake." (p. 5) A few lines later, he says, "I have not taught or supported that program for over ten years, well before I created The Quality School." (p. 5) The newsletter was published in 1997, and The Quality School was published in 1990. The most recent reference we can locate for a publication by Glasser specifically about his "10 Steps to Good Discipline" is from 1977. Assuming that is true, we conclude that William Glasser stopped advocating and developing the "10 Steps" at about the time that he encountered Powers's control theory. He has not published about the "10 Steps" for 20 years, at least not in any easily located source, and certainly not in any of his highly popular books.

People who heard Glasser during his visit to Australia say he talked extensively about the importance in choice theory of "the five basic needs." They say Glasser repeated an idea from his recent book, Staying Together, where he said people can select their mates by looking for someone with a "needs profile" like their own. Apparently he also said a therapist can predict the needs profiles of people in various psychiatric diagnostic categories. I urge the reader to remember my earlier comments about the questionable history of the needs concept in philosophy and psychology.

d. Phi Delta Kappan, April 1997, pp. 597-602, includes an article, "A new look at school failure and school success," by William Glasser. In the article, Glasser described how difficult it is for people in schools to change from stimulus-response (S-R) practices, to the practices he advocates for his Quality Schools. He wrote about how easy it is for people to cling to, or lapse back into, manipulative and punitive practices. On that topic, Glasser and Ford agree perfectly, although Ford now recognizes that the problem in many schools springs from traditional cause-effect practices, of which S-R practices are only a subset. It is obvious that staff members who use punitive manipulations on students are a major source of problems in many schools and that it is difficult for those people to give up their manipulations.

Glasser wrote that, in schools where people abandoned punitive manipulations and initiated positive, supportive interactions with students, learning improved and discipline problems declined. According to Glasser, students in those schools say that now the teachers care about them. Again, I believe Ford would agree completely with that idea. When adults listen to children, and politely ask them about what they are doing, the children often come to believe that the adults care about them.

If William Glasser's ideas, as reported in the Kappan article in 1997, and Ed Ford's ideas, as presented in his books, are close together on the issues I just described, then does that mean Ed Ford's ideas are the same as William Glasser's? No. The reason for my answer is simple. In the Kappan article, Glasser repeats the claim he has made for decades: "Choice theory teaches that we are all driven by four psychological needs that are embedded in our genes: the need to belong, the need for power, the need for freedom, and the need for fun." (p. 599) Glasser still clings firmly to his arbitrary "needs," although in this article he names only four, not the five he identifies in some other publications. Glasser also continues his idea that teachers must change the environment, specifically their own behavior, so as to meet the students' needs: "In school, if he senses that Janet (the teacher) is now caring, listening, encouraging, and laughing, John (the student) will begin to consider putting her into his quality world." (p. 600) The teacher must make the student sense her attitudes and emotions, so that perhaps the student "will begin to consider" changing himself. Ed Ford recognizes the impossibility of those demands on teachers.

I do not argue that William Glasser's program for quality schools is ineffective -- that it does not work. If the data Glasser reported in the Kappan are correct, then something positive happened in the two schools he described. I do contend that any positive changes that occurred were not caused when teachers met the four, or five, "needs" that Glasser insists drive our behavior. The situation here is much like others that have occurred many times in the history of science, and of culture in general. For long periods of time, perhaps for millennia, most people believed that certain things in nature happened for reasons that were later shown to be wrong. In many cases like that, large percentages of the general population rejected the new scientific explanations, clinging instead to explanations that were old and familiar -- and wrong.

For example, it is obvious that the sun moves around our planet, rising in the morning, moving overhead, then going down in the evening. Every person who ever lived could look at the sky and see, directly, the same sequence of events. Over millennia, people created a host of myths, legends, and physical causes, to explain what everyone could see in the sky. Now we know that something else is happening. Our new scientific knowledge does not invalidate our direct perceptions of the heavens, but it does invalidate our old explanations. Giving up an old explanation is hard, even when there is powerful evidence to refute it. I am sure there are still some people who believe the sun moves around the earth When it comes to explaining human behavior, most people, including most behavioral scientists, still cling to ideas that are equally false.

Summary of Part 3:

To summarize my conclusions after reviewing the history reported here, there is no doubt whatsoever that William Glasser's work in schools reflects an understanding of what people are, and how they function, that is different from the understanding in Ed Ford's "responsible thinking process." On the one hand, Glasser says people select and control their behavior, so as to satisfy four or five genetically-programmed needs. He also says teachers are responsible for meeting the needs of all children in their classrooms; if the teachers do that, then there will be no problems and no need for discipline. Glasser never tried to modify his practices to match the principles of perceptual control theory; instead, he tried to change control theory to match his practices. Recently, Glasser renounced all ties with perceptual control theory.

On the other hand, Ed Ford became increasingly involved in the Control Systems Group, comprising people who study and develop perceptual control theory. Even though he is not a scientist, Ford worked diligently to understand the formal theory and the behavioral model from PCT. (I know about his efforts first hand, from the many hours he spent talking to me on the telephone, and into the early morning, at meetings of CSG.) Each time Ford thought his understanding had improved, he wrote another little book about the implications and applications of PCT in counseling and daily life. Ford adapted his practices to changes in his understanding of PCT, rather than the other way around. All the while, Ford continued to use many procedures he learned as a member of Glasser's organization; that includes some questions and "strategies" from reality therapy, and elements of the "10 Steps to Good Discipline." However, Ford continuously modified his use of those techniques, to bring them in line with his growing knowledge of PCT.

For example, Ed Ford recognizes that people always behave to control how they perceive some parts of the world, and that to do so, their behavior must vary, to counteract inevitable disturbances that come from the world. When people share an environment, sooner or later, one of them will disturb someone else, either accidentally or deliberately. When that happens, a conflict might ensue. Ford's program tries to help children, and adults, learn how to control their own perceptions without unduly disturbing one another, and to help them learn how to resolve any conflicts that occur, when they inevitably do disturb one another.

The differences between Ford's and Glasser's understandings of people are reflected, directly, in what happens in schools that use their respective programs, a topic I discuss next.

Part 4: A Comparison of Certain Features from Ed Ford's "Responsible Thinking Process Ž" and William Glasser's Quality Schools and Choice Theory

A. Why Do People Behave?

In Parts 1, 2 and 3, I described differences between the explanations of human behavior promoted by William Glasser, and by perceptual control theorists. Those two explanations lead to profoundly different implications for what happens in the classroom. The differences are so great that they offer a classic example of just how important it is that we examine the theories behind our practices.

Contemporary social scientists often dismiss theories as mere "guesses," or as arbitrary declarations of personal bias. That is not true of a scientific theory. Far from being a mere guess, or a biased statement, a scientific theory is a summary of what we think we know about a subject, a summary expressed in a way that allows us to experimentally test the legitimacy of our ideas. Perceptual control theory is that kind of testable scientific theory. William Glasser's theories are not. I do not say that in a derogatory or pejorative sense. It is simply a fact that Glasser's "theories" can be characterized as guesses or as declarations of personal bias, but not as testable scientific theories. What are the practical implications of these two different kinds of theories?

William Glasser: In his recent newsletters, Glasser said that his basic program for schools is the one first described in, The Quality School, so we must look there to see what Glasser believes should be happening in schools.

"To understand what motivation actually is, it is necessary first to understand that control theory contends that all human beings are born with five basic needs built into their genetic structure: survival, love, power, fun, and freedom. All of our lives we must attempt to live in a way that will best satisfy one or more of those needs. Control theory is a descriptive term because we try to control our own behavior so that what we choose to do is the most need-satisfying thing we can do at the time." (pp. 43, 44)

"Our genes, which in essence are the biological instructions for what we are to become, not only dictate what our structure is to be (for example, our eye color) but also (and this claim is unique to control theory) how we, as humans, must attempt to live our lives. Just as a northern migrating bird must always attempt to fly south for the winter, we, too, must attempt to live our lives in ways that we believe will best satisfy our needs. If what we are asked to do in school does not satisfy one or more of these needs or we do not care for the teacher who asks us to do it, then we will do it poorly or even not at all."

"From birth, our behavior is always our best attempt at the time to do what we believe will best satisfy one or more of our needs. We can no more deny that these needs exist and are constantly on our mind (whether we are aware of it or not), than we can deny the shape of our nose or the color of our eyes. And regardless of our cultural background, we are all members of the same species, and all of us have the same genetic needs. We spend our lives trying to learn how to satisfy these needs, but most of us do not have a clear idea of what they are, especially when we are young. What we always know, however, is how we feel. And what we actually struggle for all of our lives is to feel good. It is from our ability to feel, essentially from our ability to know whether we feel good or bad, that most of us gain some idea of what our needs are." ( p. 44)

Glasser goes on to explain that students become disenchanted with school when it does not feel as good anymore. When they question why, they are told to work hard and the rewards will come later. But, unfortunately, "the genetic needs themselves know nothing about later: They are continually pushing us to do what feels good now." ( p. 46)

In a nutshell, Glasser's theory says everyone behaves to satisfy the same five basic needs, that are coded in our genes, and that the needs operate in a cause-effect manner to drive our behavior. He also says that, when our behavior is right, our needs are met, and that in schools, problems occur when adults fail to meet all of the students' needs. If you are drawn to Glasser's ideas about needs, I urge you to review my analyses of the "needs" concept, earlier in this document. Perceptual control theorists believe that not even our genes act as linear cause-effect devices, the way Glasser describes them. In PCT, we work with the idea that genes are parts of biochemical control systems and that they do not "dictate" anything.

Ed Ford & PCT: Perceptual control theory (PCT) explains behavior as the means by which we control our perceptions. In PCT, there are no prior assumptions about which perceptions a person controls at any given time, or about why the person controls those particular perceptions at that particular time. We recognize that most controlled perceptions are not universal; some are highly idiosyncratic. To control a perception, a person must act to eliminate or prevent the effects of environmental disturbances that would otherwise make the perception change from what the person wants it to be. The person must behave in a way that cancels out the effects of the disturbance -- a way that opposes the disturbance. That kind of opposition is not "good or bad," in a moral sense. A man is not necessarily good or bad when his actions cancel the effects of influences that would make his automobile veer from the path he intends A woman is not necessarily good or bad when her actions cancel the effects of influences that would cause her lecture to deviate from the topics she intends. Instead, opposition to disturbances is the necessary means by which a person controls a perception. Unavoidably, every one of our actions produces many consequences in the environment, not just the consequences that oppose disturbances to our own perceptions. The additional consequences are unintended by us, and we are usually unaware of them -- we don't realize that we just cut in front of another driver, we don't know that we are leaving a thermal image of our backside on the chair, we don't realize that our words uttered to one person were overheard by someone else who took offense.

No person can control another person's perceptions, nor can one person make another decide to control any particular perception. When people are close together in physical space and each behaves to control his or her own perceptions, it is inevitable that, sooner or later, one person will disturb another's controlled perceptions. One way we can disturb another person is unintentionally, by way of unintended consequences of our own actions. Of course, it is also possible for one person to disturb another one deliberately. In a school, disturbances are often called "disruptions." It is inevitable that disturbances and disruptions will occur from time to time, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes on purpose.

B. In The Classroom, Who Is Responsible for What?

Both William Glasser and Ed Ford believe that teachers have a right to teach to the best of their abilities, and students who want to learn have a right to learn in safety. That said, Glasser and Ford differ markedly on the subject of who is responsible for what, in the classroom.

William Glasser: Glasser's ideas about responsibility are very clear. Teachers must arrange the environment in the school in general, and the classroom in particular, so that the environment meets all of the needs of all children, simultaneously. If they do that, then discipline problems will disappear. If there are any residual discipline problems in a school, then the teachers have failed to satisfy all of the needs of all of the children. Quoting again from, The Quality School: "Like boss-managers, lead-managers have the goal of getting their workers to work hard, but to do this, they continually keep the needs of the workers in mind." (p. 42) Glasser says that teachers have to work to become part of the students' quality world. Even though he said earlier that people are all intrinsically motivated, he states that, "students will not work hard for a teacher who is not firmly embedded in their quality worlds. A teacher must expend more time and effort trying to satisfy a student than an industrial manager needs to do for a worker." ( p. 66)

Throughout, The Quality School, Glasser repeats the message that teachers must work hard to create conditions that encourage and persuade students to perform well. There is no doubt that he envisions teachers as managers of student behavior. Neither is there any doubt that, if students do not perform well, the responsibility rests on the teachers. That idea leads to his often-repeated claim that we must change the system, not the children. On the one hand, William Glasser says that everyone is internally motivated, but on the other hand he says that students do not learn unless the outside world is just right, and someone other than the students is responsible for making it right. The teacher is responsible for making the environment in the classroom, "just right." Teachers accomplish that task by satisfying the needs that Glasser says all students share. William Glasser says repeatedly that, when adults make the school just right, disruptions vanish and there is no need for discipline.

A clear example of how Glasser's needs-driven theory turns into a specific procedure in the classroom is described on page 48, in The Quality School. He says, "Learning together as a member of a small learning team is much more need-satisfying, especially to the needs for power and belonging, than learning individually." In that simple remark, I believe William Glasser reveals a willingness to impose an arbitrary system of needs on everyone, and to trivialize the differences between people that might result in some students preferring to work alone. The preferences of those "loners" would be willfully trampled, were a teacher to follow Glasser's arbitrary system for categorizing behavior according to "the five basic needs." Perceptual control theorists know that such disregard for the interests of individual students would constitute massive disturbances to many of them, and those students would be highly likely to act to cancel the effects of the disturbances -- they might very well disrupt the "cooperative-learning classroom" where they were not allowed to study alone.

Ed Ford: Ford realizes that teachers could never meet all of the needs of all students, even if there really were "five basic needs." (Or is it four?). What teachers can do is try to help students learn how to control their own perceptions without needlessly disturbing others. When disturbances occur, either intentionally or unavoidably, teachers can try to help students learn how to resolve the conflicts that are likely to ensue. In Ed Ford's, "responsible thinking process," teachers are responsible for teaching to the best of their ability and for following the RTP process. Students are responsible for learning the content of the course, for minimizing avoidable disturbances to others, and for learning how to resolve the results of disturbances that they cannot avoid. Ford's RTP sounds very simple. It is.

Just Right: Let me use a simple example to illustrate a major difference between Glasser's and Ford's ideas about interactions between people. Imagine a large room filled with one-hundred people. The thermostat is set to a temperature that feels "just right" to the person who maintains the room. How likely is it that the room will feel "just right" to all one-hundred people, simultaneously? Is there any way one person could ever change the physical state of the room to make the temperature feel "just right" to all one-hundred people, simultaneously? Of course not. In this example, we consider a simple perception, directly related to a physiological state each of us controls. Each of us feels "too cool," "too warm," or "just right," depending on the temperature of our skin, relative to the core temperature of our body, which is controlled by a control system in our brainstem.

Given access to a thermostat and an air-conditioning system, each one of us will try to alter the environment so that the temperature feels "just right." If there are many of us in one room, and if we have different ideas about where the thermostat should be set, we must work out a way to resolve our differences. If we do not do that, we will find ourselves locked in conflict with one another, or we will destroy the thermostat with our endless attempts to change its setting. The solution to our dilemma must be a social one. It is impossible for any one person to alter the environment so as to make the perceptions of temperature be "just right" for all other people, simultaneously. How much less likely is it that one person could create an environment that would simultaneously satisfy five presumed "needs," for every person in a room full of people, perhaps a room full of students? That is what William Glasser apparently expects every teacher to do; Ed Ford understands the impossibility of the task.

C. What Should Teachers Do When Students Disrupt?

William Glasser: According to William Glasser, once a school becomes a "Quality School," the needs of all students are met and there are no discipline problems. In spite of that frequent assertion, Glasser acknowledges that sometimes discipline problems still occur. In, The Quality School, and in recent newsletters, he said that alternative discipline procedures will be necessary for a few years, before a school becomes a Quality School. In the book, he described several different procedures to use with students, for disruptions of various degrees of severity. Now he says, "In the quality school program we should not use any discipline program, even if it is seen as being based on choice theory and reality therapy, such as the ten steps of discipline and restitution. Also, we should not use any other program labeled or perceived as a discipline program." A telling statement about how far William Glasser's ideas have changed over the years since he wrote, The Quality School, is when he tells his associates in recent newsletters, "we must be strong enough to resist demands for help with discipline and for discipline programs and offer them lead-management practices that will both eliminate the problems and deal with any problem, no matter how severe, that occurs in any school whether it is just beginning or far along the way toward becoming a Quality School."

"To answer the second question, what to do with a highly disruptive student: learn who they are and reach out to them when they are not disrupting." The teacher should use various strategies to engage disruptive students, and should play the role of a "social director" for them. "Finally, if all of this doesn't work, there is only one thing to do when a student is so disruptive that a teacher cannot teach, or students cannot learn. This is not counseling, it is quick and non-punitive. If you think you can keep the student in the room, get a comfortable chair, like an old easy chair, and immediately when the child disrupts, tell him to go take a rest. It is very important that all you say is: 'Take a rest.' Go to him when he settles down and evaluate if he needs reality therapy counseling, but try not to counsel him at the time. Try to integrate him back into the class and offer counseling later. If he does not settle down in the chair he must be removed from the room to a time-out room as described in several places in The Quality School. Remember, do this and only this so all children know you do not play games." (All quotations above are from, "A Message from Dr. William Glasser," May 22, 1996, and reproduced in, Australian Reality Therapy News, Vol. 9, no. 1, 1997)

In The Quality School, Glasser wrote that a student should stay in the time-out room long enough to satisfy the classroom teacher, and long enough to work out an unspecified plan to stay out of trouble in the future. He encouraged classroom teachers to "reward" students who made a plan, for "trying." Also in the book, but not in recent newsletters, Glasser said that any student whose disruptions endanger teachers or other students should be sent home for three days, and the sentence should be renewed for so long as the student is unwilling to return to school peacefully.

Ed Ford: Ford's RTP relies on a series of questions that are asked whenever a student disrupts in a classroom, or in any other locale in the school. The questions are like those in the "10 Steps to Good Discipline" that Glasser has repudiated. Ford uses the questions to help students focus their attention on what they are doing, on how their actions are related to the rules that apply in their present setting, and on how they might achieve their own goals (control their own perceptions) without running afoul of the rules in the future. Ford thinks of the rules as guidelines that help students and adults know the limits within which they can act to control their own perceptions, without needlessly disturbing other people. The rules also provide guidelines for how to resolve conflicts that occur when one person disturbs another.

A student who continues to disrupt goes to the Responsible Thinking Classroom (RTC) to think about what has happened and learn to prepare a specific plan for how to return to the classroom and avoid similar problems in the future. The student negotiates the plan with the classroom teacher. When the plan is acceptable to both parties, the student returns to class. The entire RTP process is designed to help students learn to manage their own affairs, controlling their own perceptions without needlessly disturbing other people. In Ford's program, teachers are not responsible for meeting a set of presumed universal needs, shared by all students. Instead, teachers simply teach their subjects, and use the process consistently.

In difficult cases, where a student leaves the regular classroom many times and goes to RTC, the professional staff works to discover which perceptions the student is controlling by way of going to RTC. Ford recommends a special "intervention team" to examine each such case. The team comprises the RTC teacher, the classroom teacher, the parents, perhaps the school counselor or psychologist, and any others with useful information about the child, or with access to resources that might help the child. In nearly every case where a child makes frequent visits to RTC, people discover that the student is experiencing difficult conditions at home, or elsewhere, and they develop a special plan to help the student learn how to deal with those circumstances, without disturbing other people. For example, in one school, the intervention team studied the situation of a young man who alternated between long periods when he never went to the RTC, and brief periods when he disrupted and went to RTC very often. The team discovered that, during the times when he went often to RTC, the young man was being sold by his older brother as a sexual "boy toy" for wealthy men. The school could not make that boy's situation different when he was away from the campus, but they devised a plan that helped him "make it" while he was at school. The key to a successful discipline program is as profound, and as simple, as that.

Conclusion

I hope this document helps you to better understand the relationships among Ed Ford's responsible thinking process, William Powers's perceptual control theory, and the ideas of William Glasser. As I said several times, I hold Glasser's reality therapy in high regard, as one of several present-centered therapies. However, I do not have the same high opinion of the scientific merit of Glasser's "theories," or of the way he portrays his role in the development of control theory. Neither do I think highly of the way Glasser's program, with its needs-driven theory of behavior, requires teachers to explain all behavior as driven by four, or five, arbitrary needs that the teacher must satisfy for all students. In contrast to my assessment of Glasser's theoretical utterances, I respect Ed Ford's attempts to incorporate PCT into his discipline program. Ford designed his program in an attempt to acknowledge the fact that both teachers and students always behave to control their own perceptions. Does that mean Ford's program follows, necessarily, from, PCT? That Ford's program is the only possible program that could incorporate principles from PCT? No.

Ed Ford's RTP is one example of a discipline program that incorporates principles from PCT; there is no reason to assume it is the only possible program For example, I can imagine a program that more directly incorporated the "method of levels" (MOL), a technique William Powers developed as a way to study the hierarchical organization of human perception. The MOL is used as a technique by some counselors and therapists. In some ways, Ford's RTP achieves effects similar to MOL, especially when a student answering Ford's questions begins to think about the context of his or her behavior, and about the consequences he or she causes for other people. Nonetheless, Ed Ford's RTP is not identical to the MOL, and neither RTP nor MOL is perceptual control theory.

I can also imagine a program in which someone combined features of William Glasser's program for quality schools, like the practices he suggests for developing curricula and for grading, with features of Ed Ford's RTP. A program like that could be consistent with principles from PCT. Of course, its creator would probably abandon Glasser's idea that behavior is driven by a specific set of "needs," and replace it with the ideas that all people behave to control their perceptions, and the perceptions some people control are highly idiosyncratic. Probably many different programs could be designed that would be consistent with the principles of behavior from PCT science.

In this document, I did not discuss any other discipline programs than Ford's and Glasser's, and there are many other programs than theirs. Some people tout their programs as applications of operant conditioning theory, others say their programs incorporate the principles of cognitive science and neurological science, while others assert that their programs embrace principles from both conditioning theory and cognitive science. Our analyses of those programs reveal that most of them share the same model for how events happen in the world: Virtually all discipline programs rely on theories that say cause and effect operate in a direct, linear fashion. I will discuss those other programs in additional documents.