NCJ Number
134654
Date Published
1987
Length
12 pages
Annotation
There is a widespread public and professional perception that the behavior of children and young people has emerged as the most serious educational problem.
Abstract
The problem of discipline has been highlighted by the elimination of corporal punishment in schools. The strong reaction to this move by teachers and teach organizations reflects their concern that the growing number of defiant, noncooperative, and apathetic students will be unmanageable without the option of physical punishment. Lack of discipline is partially attributable to changed social values reflecting such democratic concepts as mutual respect, shared responsibility, self-discipline, social equality, and cooperation. In Australia, almost every school is concerned with the problem of student behavior. Attempts to deal with the problem have been generally ineffective because they are based on faulty assumptions about students and learning. Four deficiencies in current approaches to student behavioral problems are identified: (1) students are not consulted in the planning of disciplinary programs; (2) proposals to re-educate teachers and parents are based on mistaken views of student behavior; (3) the view that problem students are maladjusted, deviant, abnormal, culturally deprived, pathological, or emotionally disabled and the incorrect attribution of student abnormal behavior to social and home conditions; and (4) changes in schools such as curricula, assessment, organization, administration, instruction, and technology that ignore the student. Ways of helping difficult students focus on the elimination of fighting without giving in, the identification of behavior goals, discouragement as the basis for misbehavior, and the need to promote responsibility by allowing individuals to experience the consequences of their behavior. 4 references