by Jeremiah Dyke
The purpose of this short article is to survey the discipline problem within the public school system keeping in mind the over-arching question of why students seem to no longer respect their teachers. At the end of the article, educators will find links to unorthodox advice to aid them in their discipline problems. Now, as a disclaimer, I would like to warn you that I loved a loud classroom when I taught at public schools. Anyone who observed my classroom would attest that it was anything but silent (or what other might label a disciplined classroom). Furthermore, I’m sure I allowed many actions that other teachers didn’t; it’s just not in my nature to like authority. Thus, I come to you as the glutton offering you great advice on how to lose weight.
What Are Books Telling Educators To Do?
A short trip to my local library gave me about a weekends worth of reading on classroom discipline. I won’t lie; I wasn’t impressed by any of them. Of the roughly 10 books I read, I maybe jotted down a page worth of helpful pros that I could have seen myself using in the classroom. In contrast, I filled numerous pages with disappointing, self-defeating things I would never use! Truthfully, outside our lacking, and completely arbitrary, state-mandated curriculum, advice for behavioral issues is probably among the most disappointing aspects of public education. A typical classroom discipline book reminds me of a corny, twenty-first generation politically correct, Leave it to Beaver episode. Wait, did I mention corny? Yes, it’s true that we don’t have, and don’t need, administrators or educators paddling their students whenever they make mistakes, but we also don’t need rooms full of adult sissies! Students rarely respect their teachers anymore, and to counteract this lack of respect, educators attempt to guilt their students into respecting them, or worse, attempt to define who is respectable and why they are one of them. When said strategies don’t work, educators instead start pampering themselves with excuses that this is just the way students are today; they lack respect for anything. What a faulty excuse. Has anyone thought that maybe we should attempt to earn their respect? The point is that students’ today lack respect for individuals who believe they can define success for them, as well as define whom they should deem to be failures. Such definitions of respect usually involve good grades, test scores, college, and knowledge of whatever subject the educator teaches. How self-serving! If a student asks me why they should have to be forced to study mathematics I don’t proceed to wax on about my measly accomplishments and how important math is to colleges or employers. Even if there is merit in such verbiage, the merit is totally lacking to the students; it is simply too far removed from their life to have relevance (It's like explaining the merits of retirement planning to a 21 year-old). Instead I take the uninterested criticism as a call to step up my lesson plans, to create better, more fun, ways for them to learn these math ideas. At the very least, if I can't persuade them to see the relevance of math, I want them to look forward to coming to my math class. I mean, after all, their attendance is in some regards a product of force (force of the state, the parents, etc.); at least I could try to make their stay easier.
Thus, first and foremost, educators must purge themselves of this idea that, to the student, they are important. That their subject is important. That their measly accomplishments are important. That their previous learnings are important. That, in a truly free market, one where schools are held accountable for their results, their classroom would even remotely resemble the classroom-assembly-lines we have today. Only from here can we truly begin to network with a student’s mind. Only from here can we create a system of mutual respect.
How doe we doe this? Well, our first task as educators is to take a second to get real. You and your students work about the same amount of hours per week, yet at the end of the month you receive a pay check and your students get squat! They are carted from their home, via a big yellow bus, where they are constantly told to be quiet and do work until the end of the day where they are carted back home, to which point in time they begin the process of working on the work you didn’t have time to cover while they were in class. I can only imagine the advertisement for such a position.
Read more:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dyke/dyke10.1.html
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