 Ginger is elected to the Student Council on a platform of  Persuasion not Punishment ...this is a new reform program to do away with the old school way of punishing kids. It gains popularity and even spreads to the elementary school where Carl, who explodes the school s plumbing system, becomes the first to try it. He is assigned a  Big Brother  named George who makes Carl s life miserable. He even goes so far as to want to disassemble the Dog House, which he sees as the source of Carl s troubles.