Often when I begin a conversation about education reform I start with the topic of discipline. Inevitably the person with whom I am having this conversation responds, "Yes and we need more of it - we must keep the kids in line" and similar statements. My reply is, "Our children need to become self disciplined and responsible for their own behavior. This can not happen if, for all of their formative years, they have lived in a world of external discipline. They have to learn to handle freedom in order to learn what it is to be a self disciplined contributing member of our society." Our schools must come to recognize this wrong which they are imposing on our children for short term gain. When you keep children in an externally controlled state, where the teacher is the controller, the disciplinarian, for the entire twelve year spectrum of the child’s basic education the teenage graduate leaves with a serious deficit.

This misconception of the function of discipline is one of the root ills of our current educational system. Young adults who have been subjected to externally imposed discipline for all of their formative years have no idea how to become responsible citizens in our free society. As graduates they push beyond the limits of acceptable behavior. They do not know how to fit into work or higher education since, until now, they have had no experience in self initiating. All of the decisions regarding education, what to study and how deeply to explore a subject have been met by the curriculum specialist. The interplay of externally imposed discipline and cookie cutter curriculum, where the child is excluded from the decision process, yields a young adult who is diminished in his/her ability to function as a contributing responsible citizen or as a fully functioning college student. In comparison those students who have had the freedom to choose, make meaningful decisions during their school years, leave with a firm sense of identity, and with a knowledge that their responsible behavior will sit well where ever they choose to engage themselves. While those attending college are prepared with the self discipline to undertake the rigors of academic study.

In researching this article I spent some time looking through the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). I was searching for what the OED had as a definition for discipline and self discipline. All of the entries for discipline had a negative tone. When I sought the entry for self discipline it wasn’t there! I couldn’t believe it, especially since I found over 25 entries for other self prefaced words. The one that stood out in my mind as most significant in its relevance to freedom, responsibility and self image was self actualization. How much room is there for a student to self actualize in the traditional classroom? He/she just can not self actualize in a setting where the teacher controls every aspect of life. In contrast in a multiage classroom or in a Sudbury Valley School there are multiple opportunities for a student to begin to realize the potentials of self actualization. Significantly there were a number of other self prefaced words. Since we are not specialists in enabling students to self actualize I thought you might be interested in just reading the other self prefaced words that appear to support the concept of self actualization. They are, self directing, self improving, self determination, self governed, self restraint, self respect, self- reliance, self starter, and self sufficient. How many of these concepts can be realized in an externally disciplined classroom as contrasted with a classroom where students experience greater and greater freedom and responsibility for their own education???

I would suggest that life for students gains meaning as one is given an opportunity to make, on a daily basis, meaningful decisions regarding each small step of life’s encounters. This requires giving students a great more say, freedom of choice, in the day to day operation of the classroom. As students become proficient in classrooms whose management allows for increased freedom they also learn how to become responsible and self disciplined and, as you will see shortly, their self image and academic achievement improves drastically. This does not happen over night. Educators at all levels need training and support. Teachers who have been applauded for their control strategies must learn how to gradually yield some of their control to the students. Administrators and supervisors must participate in similar training in order that they be able to provide support to their teachers as they make this difficult transition. And the students need to be trained to understand the new parameters under which they are expected to work.

Ted Sizer of Brown University through his innovative high school social studies program, Coalition of Essential Schools, has met with a modest degree of success with this retraining process.. But without continued support over extended periods of time the system seems to revert back to the teacher controlled, teacher disciplined classroom.

One video clip, of a female high school student who participated in his program, supports the value of this transfer of power from teacher to student. With a big smile on her face she states, "Before this new program I had difficulty writing a single page essay which yielded a C, now I write a ten page paper and get an easy A". Her smile and personal manor tells much about the self confidence she has gained through her involvement in Sizer’s social studies program.

The multiage classroom at the elementary school provides many opportunities for students to learn about self initiation, self discipline, responsibility with the resulting change in self image.

The following e-mail, posted from a teacher to the Multiage listserv, shows how self directed students can be if they have had previous experience in sharing some of the responsibilities of running a class.

I was out on a personal day yesterday and my sub never showed up. My students had it all under control and taught themselves for 45 minutes! Apparently, the 1st grade teacher went in to hear the announcements as her intercom isn't working and she asked the kids where their teacher was and they told her she never came. She said they were all very attentive on the rug doing calendar. She found an ed tech to cover my room for the day! I talked to my kids about it today and I asked them why they didn't tell the office, and they said they knew what to do-they had even found my sub plans and read the plans and were ready to go through with the day. Two of the olders decided they were in charge and everyone agreed to it. They even took the lunch count slip to the office and never said a word! I told them how proud I was of them, but in the future, let someone know! I have seen some classes go into their room and if the teacher isn't right there, they panic!

          Kim (mhayward@telplus.net)

This is the type of behavior one may expect when a teacher shares responsibility with his students. The one error here was that the ed tech who eventually became the substitute intervened in the students self directed self disciplined behavior. I imagine they would have been quite successful in preceding though the day’s activities without guidance. They in fact knew more of how their particular class functioned than any substitute that could have been brought in.

Opening the door to allow self discipline to develop represents the single most important change that can be introduced to our schools. We know very little about the course of action yet in those settings where it has been explored the resultant change in responsible behavior and the level of self direction has been significant.

What follows is a quote from an e-mail that appeared on the Multiage Listserv that demonstrates how students, given freedom, are able to begin the self actualization process.

I would like to address the issue of multiage and self image, from my experiences working with classes of 9-12 year olds for eight years in a multiage atmosphere, and then watching them continue with their education. Our students became very independent and responsible, and felt very successful. It was very obvious which students came to me from our primary multiage classrooms, due to such things as their independence and ability to make their own decisions, work cooperatively, work until they completed a task, seek help from other students, and not wait for me to tell them every step to take. Many of them were also working above grade level in one or more areas due to the exposure to 4th and 5th grade work in the primary centers.

When our intermediate students continued into middle school, many of them were also working above grade level, and the feedback from the middle school teachers was the same. Even our students who tested average and below average were very successful. They accepted responsibility to complete assignments, made decisions without waiting for the teacher to tell them what to do, tended to put extra effort into projects, etc. The teachers indicated they "knew how to learn." None of our students ended upon their "at risk" lists. We continue to see the names of our students, including these "average and below average" students on the honor rolls, both in middle school and high school. (Janet Banks, CATS Publications, Edmonds, WA)

 

Another model worth investigating is the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham Massachusetts. This school, founded in 1969, demonstrates the possibilities that exist when you remove all of the controls we have in public education and allow a child to use his/her innate inquiry skills to initiate all of their learning experiences within a community of inquirers. Even those students who make the transition from traditional high schools soon learn to reignite their innate inquiry skills and renew the experience of having a love of learning. What a gift to give a child who has fought the controls of traditional education. The joy of self discovery is an empowering force. We deny it to our masses. The success of this 32 year old program is documented in books, reports and video’s. There are now over 20 clones of this model throughout the US and several other countries around the world. There is a value to look at this extreme model as we consider providing freedom to our students in our traditional classrooms. What has been so spectacularly demonstrated at the Sudbury School is that when students are given total freedom to choose what they wish to study they do so with focus, enthusiasm and a level of intensity that far outstrips the effort traditional students put into their studies.

In the November/December 2000 issue of Mothering magazine, Daniel Greenberg, one of the founders of the Sudbury Valley school writes about Respect, What Children Get in Democratic Schools. His concluding remarks give one an insight into how freedom and its related elements contributes to the maturation of the Sudbury students.

A university researcher periodically interviewed Sudbury students over a seven year period. The researcher noted that although parents often had reservations about sending a child to a school that does not "prepare" them for a particular career goals, those who emerge from Sudbury have gotten further with these concerns than those who haven’t learned self reliance . While still in school, they seem to reach stages of maturity most people do not achieve until they are graduated from college. They don’t seem to be plagued by the feelings of uncertainties, confusion, or despair that characterize so many people on the verge of assuming adult responsibilities. They examine their motives and activities thoroughly and continually, regardless of what particular thing they are doing, and they are not afraid of obstacles or failure. (Daniel Greenberg, Mothering Magazine, no. 103, Nov/Dec 2000.)

The fully self confident self actualized student cannot properly develop in a classroom where he/she is deprived of making meaningful decisions about their daily life. We are not used to thinking about these very important dimensions of the development of our youth. This goes far beyond our antiquated focus on traditional curricula. In settings where teachers have been wise enough to yield control over many day to day management and circular decisions to the students many of the self actualization behaviors begin to emerge. The multiage classroom and the Sudbury Valley school experiences are two such areas where one is able to observe students taking charge of their education and begin to develop their self actualization skills.

January 2, 2001

Raymond H. Hartjen, 43 Old Fireplace Road, East Hampton, NY 11937,  rhartjen@hamptons.com

Although the following e-mail was received from Janet Banks after she read my paper on Social IQ many of her points support the arguments of this paper.