Sociology of Classroom Discipline - Article

This was an interesting article.  Published in 1991 I feel it has become a bit outdated but it still had some interesting ways to think about the relationship between curriculum and classroom management.  In fact, the way they describe classroom management was as 'discipline' or 'order' throughout the entire article.

The author describes schools as generally having three types of teaching their curriculum and then three types of discipline that go along with them.  Traditionalists are those teachers whom we think about as pure lecturers and "ignore conflict while stressing consensus and stability" meaning they use punishment as a way of getting the students to conform to what they want. Conceptual Empiricists focus on the social interactions within a classroom.  Meaning the students and teacher work together to create a working relationship.  The last group are the reconceptualists who view the traditionalists curriculum as unfair because of social class systems are translated into a classroom and do not rely on punishments as sanctions.

It was interesting to see how the author saw classrooms twenty years ago.  When he gave is opinion on how to create rules and regulations for the classrooms, he said that teachers should use more "don't" sentences because it is more specific for the students to understand.  In direct opposition to what we believe now.

I believe he was on-point though when he claimed that schools have been adopting the management strategies for businesses by treating teachers as workers and students as products.  He made an interesting observation that although lower salaries and higher classroom sizes may be cost effective, it was not giving students the best chance at an education.  In order to combat these rising problems and lowering morale, he says to give some power back to the students by using the secondary student classroom to develop their own set of rules.  I liked this because it gets the teacher interacting with their students and then the students are engaged in their classroom; or at least are aware of the consequences if not working within the group.  This was radical thinking to him because it was in line with the 'reconceptualist' doctrine.

He went onto describe the four ways teachers can execute authority over their students.  All of which I had heard before so was not exciting news.  But he wrote about using charisma as power or personal domination as brand new ways of exerting authority in classrooms.  We talked about this with Dr. Phillips last year, and although there are 4 established ways of thinking about authority, I believe a teacher needs to be well-versed in all of them and be able to move through them without much difficulty.  Control over students can be tenuous, and we need to be able to choose which source will be the most effective in any situation.

"Dealing with students in positive ways has no limitations and offers teachers the opportunity to expand their interactions with students".  He was ahead of his time when he wrote that.