John Rosemond's Philosophy on Character Development: A Research-Based Guide for Educators
Transform chaotic classrooms using John Rosemond's Three R's: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness. No rewards needed—just real instant consequences.
Q: What are John Rosemond's Three R's of character development?
A: John Rosemond's Three R's are: (1) Respect for legitimate adult authority, (2) willingness to accept Responsibility, and (3) a Resourceful attitude toward challenge. These principles were commonly taught in 1950s households before children entered school, contributing to higher academic achievement despite larger class sizes.
(How to...)
Q: How to implement John Rosemond's classroom discipline strategies?
A: Eliminate reward systems and behavior modification charts
- Assign every student daily classroom responsibilities
- Use clear, commanding communication (under 10 words)
- Implement compelling, immediate consequences
- Remain absolutely consistent
- Partner with parents in an "educational alliance"
The Crisis in American Classrooms
John Rosemond (born November 25, 1947) is an American columnist, public speaker and author on parenting, with 15 books on the subject. His ideas revolve around authority for parents and discipline for children. With over fifty years of experience working with families since 1971, Rosemond has the longest running continuous newspaper column, for a record breaking 45 years, and is syndicated in approximately 225 newspapers nationwide.
According to Rosemond, "I receive a steady stream of missives from teachers, ex-teachers, and other folks who have insider knowledge of America's schools. They all say the same thing — classroom discipline is falling apart and has been for some time." He notes that while public-school administrators often refuse to acknowledge the problem, "every teacher I've spoken to in the past twenty years has told me it's worse than the public even imagines and getting worse with every passing year."
Core Philosophy: The Rejection of "Postmodern Psychological Parenting"
The Fundamental Shift
Rosemond argues that "in the 1960s we embraced a psychological paradigm of parenting that is 180 degrees removed from the biblical paradigm that prevailed in American prior to that time." In his book Parent-Babble: How Parents Can Recover from Fifty Years of Bad Expert Advice, he "asserts that America has been in the throes of an ever-deepening child-rearing crisis since the 1970s, and he explains how parents have moved away from the child-rearing basics of the 1950s and 1960s to focus on raising children with 'high self-esteem.'"
Two Fatal Flaws
Rosemond identifies two fallacious ideas underlying modern parenting psychology: "one that high self-esteem is a good thing, and that we should help our children acquire it" and "that behavior modification works as well on human beings as it does on lower forms of life."
On the first fallacy, he states: "It's shocking to today's parents to hear someone say that high self-esteem is not a good thing, but the research finds that high self-esteem is associated with pathological behavior. People with high self-esteem tend to have very low respect for others."
Regarding behavior modification, Rosemond argues that "behavior modification works on dogs and toddlers, not on children." He explains: "Reward a child for obedience and he is likely to turn right around and disobey the first chance he gets. Punish a child for misbehaving and the misbehavior may get worse. This is not because the child carries a gene that makes him impervious to 'normal forms of discipline.' It is because of all the species on the planet, only human beings are capable of acting deliberately contrary to their best interests."
The Three R's: Rosemond's Foundation for Character
Rosemond's traditional child-rearing formula centers on teaching children "the 'Three R's' of Respect for legitimate adult authority, a willingness to accept Responsibility, and a Resourceful attitude toward challenge."
How the 1950s Did It Better
Rosemond observes: "In the 1950s, class sizes routinely averaged 35-45 kids, with only one teacher. Yet children at every grade were achieving at considerably higher levels than are today's kids, kids who rarely attend an elementary class of more than 25 children taught by a teacher and an aide. How was this possible? The answer: By the time the child of the '50s came to first grade, he had been taught, in the home, by his parents, the 'Three R's' of Respect for legitimate adult authority, a willingness to accept Responsibility, and a Resourceful attitude toward challenge."
Chores: The Foundation of Character Development
The Philosophy Behind Chores
Rosemond emphasizes that "there is no such thing as good citizenship without responsibility" and that parents should use "the classroom of her family to teach this child the service ethic, the work ethic."
In his book The New Six-Point Plan for Raising Happy, Healthy Children, Rosemond recommends "a no-nonsense approach to teaching children responsibility," stating that parents "must give them a deal they can't refuse."
Five Outcomes of Chores
Rosemond identifies five practical outcomes when children do age-appropriate chores:
- "It helps them develop the skills for running a home and enables them to become independent."
- "Children who get something for nothing loose respect for the things they get and develop a skewed perception of how life works."
- "Chores finished responsibly contribute to self-esteem. Contributors are happy people, non-contributors feel useless."
- "It enables them to develop a contributor's mentality, a sense of initiative."
- "Children who contribute to the family learn to think more about 'us' than 'me.'"
The Rosemond Family Example
When his children Eric and Amy were 9 and 6, Rosemond made significant changes: "They began expecting Eric and Amy to do most of the housework _ in fact, all except the washing, ironing and cooking. 'They each had 45 minutes a day of housekeeping chores. The goal was to put them into responsible positions. How else can children become responsible adults?' he asks."
Critical Principle: No Payment for Chores
Rosemond is adamant: "One of the things that people ask me, they say, 'Well, you talk about not paying these children for jobs. You don't think they should be paid?' I say, 'Absolutely not. I don't get paid for mowing the lawn. I don't get paid for painting the living room. These are family obligations.' And to me, the minute you pay a child for a chore done in the family, you eradicate just a little bit more that child's ability to understand the service ethic."
Classroom Applications: What Teachers Can Do
The Discipline Crisis in Schools
Rosemond reports that teachers tell him: "Excellent teachers are giving up. They send kids to the office when they're disruptive, and in minutes the child is back after having received a cookie or some other treat while they talked about their 'feelings.' Also, almost every teacher says that when they call a parent about a child's behavior, the parent makes excuses or blames the teacher."
He identifies the problem as consisting of "equal parts irresponsible parenting, parents who make excuses for brats they send to school, teacher unions that have been given legal power to game the system, federal aid to education (long outlived its usefulness), and administrators who strip teachers of permission to discipline and then discipline teachers who have the temerity to do so."
The Three C's of Effective Discipline
Rosemond teaches that "the keys to effective discipline are the 'Three C's' of clear, authoritative communication, compelling consequences, and consistency. The key is to assign emotional and practical responsibility for a child's misbehavior to its rightful owner – the child."
His discipline strategy is summarized: "Disciplinary communication (communicating instructions, limits, and expectations) must command! Disciplinary consequences must compel. Disciplinary consistency must confirm the parent's determination to further the best interests of the child in question."
Communication That Commands
Rosemond advises: "The clearer a parent is concerning his or her expectations, the more likely it is the child will obey. Say what you mean and mean what you say, and communicate your expectations in the least number of words. The more words you employ, the more it appears that you are pleading as opposed to directing."
He mocks modern parents who "plead, bargain, bribe, cajole, reason, explain and threaten."
Practical Classroom Strategies
1. Establish Clear Authority
Research shows that "the happiest children are also the most obedient children, and that obedient children tend to have parents who score high on measures of authority."
Classroom Application:
- Communicate expectations in 10 words or fewer
- Eliminate negotiation and explanation
- Use commanding language: "You will..." not "Can you please..."
- Stop using reward charts and behavior modification systems
2. Assign Meaningful Responsibilities
Rosemond emphasizes: "Create a contributing role for each of your children by assigning daily chores beginning at age three. It's important, therefore, that you teach your children that service is a virtue."
Classroom Application:
- Every student has a daily classroom maintenance duty (not as punishment)
- Students prepare and clean the learning environment
- Rotate responsibilities monthly
- Frame duties as privileges and contributions, not chores
- No rewards or recognition charts for completing responsibilities
3. Reject Behavior Modification Systems
Rosemond criticizes schools that "forbid 'negative' consequences like taking away recess or having misbehaving children write sentences. They send teachers to seminars on behavior-modification based classroom strategies that 'work' only with kids who would be well-behaved without them."
Classroom Application:
- Eliminate clip charts, color-coded behavior systems, and treasure boxes
- Stop rewarding basic courtesy and expected behavior
- Focus on natural and logical consequences
- Make consequences swift, certain, and memorable
4. Minimize Toys and Maximize Resourcefulness
The Rosemonds "told the kids that they would have to choose 10 of their favorite toys. The rest would be thrown out if they were broken or given to charity if they were still usable. 'We told them that the days of toys were over,' Rosemond says. 'We encouraged them to keep their most creative toys and told them we would support any hobbies.'"
Classroom Application:
- Reduce excessive classroom materials and entertainment options
- Provide simple, open-ended materials that require creativity
- Allow productive boredom—students learn to entertain themselves
- Focus on hobbies and sustained interests, not momentary entertainment
5. Address the Self-Esteem Myth
Rosemond notes that "before we embraced the psychological paradigm in the 1960s, humility and modesty were ideals in American culture, and they are completely removed from the high self-esteem ethic."
Classroom Application:
- Stop excessive praise for ordinary achievements
- Emphasize duty, service, and contribution over feelings
- Teach humility, not self-celebration
- Focus on character qualities: diligence, perseverance, service
6. The Parent-Teacher Alliance
Rosemond states: "A teacher cannot be expected to get a child's behavior under control without full cooperation from the child's parents. That cooperation has to include unmitigated acknowledgment of the problem as well as a commitment to follow through at home when there are discipline problems at school."
Classroom Application:
- Present behavior problems factually, not emotionally
- Request that parents implement consequences at home
- Refuse to accept excuses or blame-shifting
- Frame collaboration as an "educational alliance" for the child's benefit
The Six-Point Plan Applied to Classrooms
Rosemond's six-point plan, adapted from what "was going on 50 years ago," includes:
- "Adults are the center of attention in the family. Children should pay more attention to adults than adults pay to children."
- [Marriage-focused—not applicable to classrooms]
- [Parent authority—see point 1]
- "Children should be responsible contributing members of the family, and the most meaningful way to do this is through housework."
- "Children should not have a lot of toys. Those that they have should be creative. They should also not be involved in a lot of after-school activities. Rather, they should be encouraged to have hobbies and should learn how to occupy their own time."
- "During the preliterate stage (up to age 7), there should be no TV. After that, there should only be a few hours of preapproved television programs a week."
Classroom Translation:
Point 1: Teachers are the center of attention, not students. The classroom serves learning, not entertainment or self-expression.
Point 4: Every student contributes to classroom maintenance 15-20 minutes daily. No exceptions, no rewards.
Point 5: Minimize classroom "toys" (fidgets, excessive decorations, entertainment materials). Provide materials for sustained, creative work.
Point 6: Eliminate or severely restrict screen time and entertainment in classrooms. Focus on productive work.
Addressing Modern Classroom Myths
Myth: Smaller Class Sizes Improve Achievement
Rosemond counters: "The teacher-pupil ratio has little to do with student achievement, as demonstrated in the 1950s when elementary classrooms were bursting at the seams (nearly three times as many students per teacher than is presently the case) and student achievement was significantly higher than it has been since."
He argues: "The unassailable fact is that student achievement has declined as classroom behavior problems have risen and teachers have been increasingly hamstrung –– by unsupportive administrators, politicians and the courts –– when it comes to discipline. It's student behavior, folks, not class size."
Myth: Parental Homework Help Improves Achievement
Rosemond cites research: "A 2014 study found an inverse relationship between homework help from parents and school achievement, regardless of any demographic characteristic or even a child's ability level. The fact is that homework enabling –– a much more accurate descriptor than 'homework help' –– is like any other form of enabling. It has a decidedly negative impact on personal responsibility and, therefore, a negative impact on student achievement."
Myth: Progressive Education Innovations Work
Rosemond notes: "The new ideas in question have been supported by social science researchers (who will support just about anything one wants it to support), yet none of the new ideas –– open classrooms, outcome-based education, collaborative learning, to cite a few) –– have panned out. Today as yesterday, the most successful schools are those that adhere to a traditional model."
International Models That Work
While Rosemond doesn't extensively discuss international education models in his available writings, his philosophy aligns with systems that emphasize:
- Service and responsibility (Japanese model of student-cleaned schools)
- Practical work and craftsmanship (Finnish handicraft integration)
- Character over self-esteem
- Meaningful contribution over entertainment
These models succeed because they reject the behavior modification and self-esteem focus that Rosemond critiques in American education.
Implementation Guide for Teachers
Week 1: Foundation Setting
Day 1-2:
- Announce the shift from entertainment to responsibility
- Eliminate all reward systems
- Assign each student a specific daily responsibility
Day 3-5:
- Teach the Three C's: Command, Consequences, Consistency
- Practice clear, brief communication (under 10 words)
- Implement immediate, meaningful consequences for misbehavior
Month 1: Establishing Routines
- Morning: Students prepare the classroom (5-10 minutes)
- Throughout day: Students perform assigned responsibilities
- Afternoon: Students restore the classroom (5-10 minutes)
- No rewards, recognition, or praise for expected contributions
Quarter 1: Building Character
- Students rotate through all classroom responsibilities
- Introduce long-term projects requiring sustained effort
- Reduce entertainment and increase productive work time
- Partner with parents using the "educational alliance" model
Year 1: Cultural Transformation
- Document growth through responsibility portfolios
- Expand student-managed classroom systems
- Reduce teacher involvement, increase student autonomy
- Celebrate character development, not self-esteem
Addressing Teacher Concerns
"This seems harsh or old-fashioned"
Rosemond responds: "Whereas the old way enforced responsibility on the child for his behavior, the new way neatly absolves him of that responsibility. The misbehaving child, once a perpetrator, has become a victim, in need of therapy or drugs or both. …Enough time has passed to determine whether this grand social experiment is working or not. Is it? One single fact answers the question: Since 1965, when postmodern psychological parenting began gaining a toehold in our culture, every single indicator of positive well-being in America's children has been in a state of precipitous decline."
"I'll lose my job if I eliminate required behavior systems"
Document your approach as "responsibility-based character education." Frame duties as "classroom citizenship" and consequences as "natural outcomes." Most administrators support approaches that reduce behavior problems, even if they differ from district mandates.
"Parents will complain"
Rosemond acknowledges this challenge: "Unfortunately, there is widespread reluctance on the part of today's parents to fully acknowledge their kids' classroom behavior problems. Upon hearing of a problem, too many parents toss the hot potato back at the teacher, claiming that her management of or attitude toward the child is the issue, not the child's behavior."
Communicate your approach proactively. Frame it as preparing students for real-world responsibility. Most parents actually appreciate clear expectations and genuine consequences.
Expected Outcomes
Based on Rosemond's philosophy and the traditional model he advocates:
Short-term (Weeks 1-4):
- Initial resistance and testing
- Some parent pushback
- Gradual reduction in negotiation and arguing
Medium-term (Months 2-6):
- Students perform duties without prompting
- Reduced behavior problems
- Increased student independence
- More respectful classroom culture
Long-term (Year 1+):
- Students take pride in contributions
- Classroom runs with minimal teacher intervention
- Character qualities emerge: diligence, service, respect
- Higher academic achievement due to reduced disruption
Conclusion: The Path Forward
Rosemond reminds us: "Proper child-rearing requires the understanding that one's primary obligation is NOT to the child, but to neighbor and culture."
His "approach to child-rearing emphasizes and a focus on character development." For educators, this means abandoning the failed experiments of the past fifty years—behavior modification, self-esteem building, reward systems—and returning to timeless principles: respect for authority, meaningful responsibility, and resourceful character.
As Rosemond warns, without change, "by 2030 nearly every public-school student will have a diagnosis of one sort or another." The alternative is to create classrooms where students contribute meaningfully, develop genuine character, and learn that their primary purpose is not self-expression but service to others.
The question is not whether teachers can afford to implement Rosemond's philosophy. The question is whether we can afford not to.
Key Resources
Books by John Rosemond:
- Parent-Babble: How Parents Can Recover from Fifty Years of Bad Expert Advice (2012)
- The Well-Behaved Child: Discipline That Really Works! (2009)
- Parenting by The Book: Biblical Wisdom for Raising Your Child (2013)
- The New Six-Point Plan for Raising Happy, Healthy Children (2006)
- John Rosemond's Fail-Safe Formula for Helping Your Child Succeed in School (2014)
Online Resources:
- Website: rosemond.com
- ParentGuru membership site: parentguru.com
- Syndicated column in 225+ newspapers nationwide
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