Be careful with CATEGORIES
Life with line
Imagine this:
You are the parent of two beautiful children. On a typical day the kids come back home after school. Both of them had a math test and one of them passed it, the other one didn’t.
You reward the first child and punish the second one.
This is how it works. Decisions between good and bad.
But is it right?
What could happened?
The first one scored 50% and the other one 49%.
50% happened to be THE LINE which divided siblings into two opposite categories.
The line between the categories of success and failure.
They both can have a remarkably similar set of skills. One just could have had a bit more luck during the test compared to his sibling that day.
What might happen?
The rewarded child’s knowledge will stagnate if a part of the reward is watching TV or playing video games. It might not be good for his development. His future test attempt might be on the other side of the line.
Usually, a part of the punishment after a failed test is preparation for the test re-do.
So the punished child will gain more knowledge and raise his chances to score above THAT 50% LINE.
Do we risk the rewarded child’s future by misunderstanding the line?
Maybe.
What have we done?
The reward we gave had negative consequences, while the punishment we gave had positive ones. Ironic, right? But that is a completely different story.
The closer we get to the line, the harder it is to determine the side or easier to make a mistake.
More about category lines
Different people, different nations and different languages divide a rainbow into color categories in different places. While somebody sees red another person can see orange or brown.
It is the same with drinking age. Around the world we set the line at a different age. Does setting the drinking age of 21 in the USA statistically mean people become responsible 3 years later than people in most European countries with legal drinking age of 18?
If the police catch a guy drinking that is one day away from becoming 21 years of age he can get in serious trouble. But if he waits one day he can drink as much as he wants. If you were a judge working on the guy that had one day to his 21st birthday’s case what would your verdict be? Yes, he broke the law. But would you consider the line between his age and 21? Or would you just see 2 categories?
Life is full of situations where we can act differently if we just understand THAT LINE.
Thank you and have a nice day :)
