How to tame the lions

Updated on: Monday, December 14, 2009

The dream of any teacher is to have a disciplined classroom where the students are not only clear about the dos and don'ts, but also adhere to the same. It is also the dream of every parent to have highly disciplined children at home. But more often than not, both the teachers and the parents are disappointed about what they get in their classroom and home. Just as road traffic with irresponsible and indisciplined drivers will be chaotic, so will be a classroom and a home with children who do not behave well.

The main reason for indiscipline among children, wherever they are, is the fact that parents and teachers are not trained in an important skill called “behaviour management.”

With the changes that have taken place in the environment, children have become very restless and their mind is distracted to a very large extent, resulting in indisciplined behaviour. Today's children are highly intelligent and at the same time a challenge to the teachers and parents.

Teachers and parents need to develop skills in the area of ‘behaviour management.' Two breakthrough ideas came up in the 1970s in the U.S. One was the principle of assertive discipline by Lee and Marlene Canter and the other was the principle of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.

Lee and Marlene Canter gave a detailed set of procedural guidelines to teachers on how to achieve a highly disciplined classroom by following some common sense principles of human behaviour. Richard Bandler and John Grinder came out with the breakthrough idea that a human mind can be ‘programmed' just like a computer.

Assertive discipline

The principles of assertive discipline and the NLP can be very effectively combined to train teachers and parents to raise highly disciplined children. The basic principles of assertive disciple are:

1. Teachers have a right to decide the norms of behaviour in the classroom and no pupil has a right to disrupt the classroom.

2. Teachers have to be trained in assertive discipline so that they can deal with the issues of student misbehaviour.

3. To ensure a disciplined classroom, teachers should behave assertively as opposed to aggressively and non-assertively.

4. Assertive teachers are in control of the classroom and students without losing their healthy rapport with students.

5. Assertive teachers do not behave in a timid, inconsistent or passive manner when confronted with misbehaviour.

How to tame the lions

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