That has nothing to do with it. That article is simply saying that punishment can be abused; something most are aware of.It also mentions emotional cueing and response, something that is unrelated to the punishment itself. Also it talks about degrading "self esteem" something intensly subjective. What I meant was, in the case of punishment, gradual punishment is not effective, severe immediate punishment is. I did not mean to insinuate that punishment is best in general, that was a grammar misuse on my part.
This does not mean punishment is not effective, or necessary. I suggest you look up B.F Skinner..His groundbreaking work on operant conditioning really applies to classrooms. It would take too long to get into the theory here..but it is basic reinforcement (negative or positive) and punishment. Reinforcement makes a behavior more likely to occur, punishment makes it less likely. You could avoid punishing to get the correct behavior, ONLY if the child never performed an undesirable behavior or if you can identify whatever is reinforcing the behavior and eliminating it (extinction of undesirable behavior). If they were good all the time, and reinforced for it, then punishment would not be needed. Unfortunately I know of no such child. Punishment is required so that an organism (child) experiences something bad (I use bad to differentiate from negative, something different according to Skinner) and no longer does the behavior, so they do not "learn" it. This all works on the basic assumption that the organism does these behaviors (whether desirable or undesirable) because they gain something from it. If the reinforcer cannot be found or removed the trick is to punish it severely enough that they do not do the behavior again and do not learn to be reinforced by it.
Punishment should not be used to control behavior, rather it is used solely in the instance that behavior needs to stop when it can not be extinguished. (by removing reinforcer, though this can still be punishment, depending on your theorist
What I was speaking about is true, severe punishment stops the behavior quicker, and lasts longest( now of course, "strong" does not mean abuse, it must be tailored to the child and situation but be sufficient for instance a strong reprimand can be severe enough for a sensitive child) than gradual punishment, that schedule is the least effective.. In fact reinforcing every time your child does something good isn't the way to get desirable behavior either. A variable schedule is best, that is, that the amount of behaviors to get a reinforcer varies. This has been repeatedly shown to have the longest impact on behavior and reduce the probability of extinction (that is, they no longer perform the desirable behavior).
