Shiv on Learning

Discipline is an ugly word. It’s about keeping people in line, stopping them from doing anything different to what they’ve been told. It conjures the image of a sneering drill sergeant, whip in hand, slowly inspecting endless ranks of dull, identical, faceless drones; hardly the idea you want associated with education. Discipline has played an important part in education for centuries, but that’s not to say that we shouldn’t be trying to make it obsolete. One of the most common questions I’m asked when I do a presentation is: “What do you do when a student misbehaves?” The answer is this: Students don’t misbehave; we hardly spend any time on discipline. That’s not to say that we aren’t prepared for misbehaviour, students can be kicked out of classes if they do, but to date it’s never happened. To see why, let’s look at some of the typical reasons for misbehaviour and what we can do to tackle them.

It’s important to note at this juncture that students don’t necessarily choose to misbehave, but the circumstances that they are subject to, forces them to act out just to regain some control of the situation. People are by nature a creative and inquisitive bunch so there are many diverse reasons why they’d disrupt a class rather than take part. In the early years of education, students didn’t actually want to be in class but were forced to nonetheless by law. Traditional teaching methods that exist in the classroom take advantage of the fact that they have a captive audience and focus on the material rather than how it’s being delivered. Thus the same, dull, copying from the board method still prevails, not as the most effective or memorable method of teaching, but the easiest. Ironically, the punishment for misbehaviour in the traditional classroom is detention. Students are acting out because they don’t want to be there and the punishment for doing so is more time at school. This will only increase the individual’s aversion to the classroom and may actually worsen their behaviour. Students should want to learn at every opportunity and that’s the mindset that should be cultivated rather than this perverse prisoner mentality.

The old methods of teaching leads to the next big cause for misbehaviour: boredom. While the student may be attending class voluntarily the specific subject may not hold their interest, and so they find other ways of occupying themselves. This boredom can stem from a number of reasons: the subject itself may not be relevant; the teacher has poor interpersonal skills and fails to enrapture students or the class is the wrong level for the student, either too easy or too hard and they will simply stop participating. All three of these issues stem from the current system’s inability to be tailored to the individual needs of each student. They had no choice in the information they’re given to learn, which is then read at them in a stock standard format; they have no choice in who teaches them and what methods they use, and teachers simply don’t have time to give a high level of attention to each student to ensure that they understand the material. In my own studies, my teachers all tackled difficult subjects by rote and in abstraction, in the rather hopeful assumption that understanding and context would manifest later on.

The prevailing educational system is a dinosaur, a living fossil from the industrial age aimed at churning out identical workers: replacement cogs in the factory line so that production never has to stop. As technology has evolved the processes taught have changed too but the methodology remains the same. Individuality is discouraged, classes are one-size-fits-all and those that they don’t fit are given lower grades and ignored. Our current reward and punishment system for good and bad behaviour is too primitive and actually distortive to the individual’s principles. It is no more than Pavlovian conditioning for students to act in a certain way purely for the treat at the end; they are well behaved because of the prize. To paraphrase Kant: In the real world, where good behaviour doesn’t necessarily come with a reward or bad behaviour isn’t always punished, the individual will end up acting whichever way is advantageous to themselves, regardless of the morality of their actions.

The first step here is to treat the class as if they aren’t shackled to their desks; that they can leave at any time. Students should be well aware that this is a place where they are going to learn and improve and not be judged unfairly. With this as our perspective our aim then is to get them as engaged in the subject as possible, so that they want to be there and take part. It’s definitely not an easy prospect but there are some general guidelines that we can follow.

Fear of failure is perhaps the most difficult cause to address, as it requires a fundamental shift in the pupil’s mindset. In an environment where the individual constantly feels judged, they are likely to decide simply not to participate: if they haven’t tried they haven’t failed. However, if they feel as if they are part of a community that is focused on learning and improving together and genuinely helping each other to do so, then the fear of judgement is removed and the individual can participate fully and enthusiastically without worrying about mistakes. The students should be encouraged to participate and work with each other as much as possible, lessons should be more of an interaction than a lecture and the lessons themselves should be in the context of a broader theme that the students are aware of so that they can see where it is relevant. Where possible, it should be presented from their perspective: how they will use it going forward. On our parts as educators, we should look objectively at whether each lesson is pertinent for our students and seek to change the ones that aren’t into something more useful for them.

At Languagelab we’ve tried to address the “failure” problem by making the student feel like mistakes are part of progression and improvement, rather than identifying it as a question mark over their abilities. It may sound far-fetched but it does exist in the gaming world. Players die all the time in computer games, but are able to continue immediately with the same task without any loss of face or judgement from their peers. They haven’t failed by any measure: they just haven’t succeeded yet. This is the mindset we encourage. Avatars remove the personal association to mistakes and increases engagement with the task at hand. At the same time lessons are a collaborative effort and the emphasis is achieving the learning target at the end rather than how many attempts they took to get there. Conventional classrooms are at a disadvantage in this respect as often participation is on a one-on-one basis, i.e. one child put in the spot light in front of their peers: a thoroughly frightening prospect.

There exist many an old adage about maintaining control; quips about short leashes, giving inches and taking miles. Most of these refer to people who have lived in a tightly controlled environment, people who, when given some space run as far as possible from the conventions that restrained them. If these people were given the chance to define their own boundaries from a young age, to be really a part of choosing what to learn and the way in which they do, they’d be far more self-sufficient and proactive people without the need for constant supervision. It should not seem like us, the teachers, against them, the students, but instead a community of people working together towards a common goal. Students need to see their teachers and classes as part of a team that will aid their own development rather than impediments to them.

The ideal scenario is of course a vibrant and engaging environment where courses are completely in the control of the student, who chooses what to learn, so it’s relevant to them, and when, so it’s always convenient, and from which teacher, so they learn most effectively. There would also be a strong community of peers in place too, to provide encouragement and assistance to the individual in and out of classes. With the student in charge and very much working towards their own goals, the idea of misbehaving wouldn’t even occur in their minds.

“To focus on discipline is to ignore the real problem: We will never be able to get students (or anyone else) to be in good order if, day after day, we try to force them to do what they do not find satisfying. “
-WILLIAM GLASSER, CONTROL THEORY IN THE CLASSROOM

I have to admit at this point that when we created our program structure, lesson format and everything else, discipline or disruptive students was not a primary consideration. We believed that engagement was the most important aspect of learning and it just turned out to be a panacea for the numerous discipline problems that exist in the traditional classroom.  We’ve designed not just our lessons, but our entire teaching environment, with engagement at its core. Every aspect of English City aims to increase the student’s immersion into language learning. When not attending specific classes they can simply wander around the place, talking to other students or engage with any of the other avatars that are there. Learning becomes an adventure of the student’s own making, rather than a force-fed diet of dull, inflexible and abstract material taken straight from a one size fits all text book. Simply put, our students want to be here and they want to learn and we see our purpose as making that as easy as possible for them.