Freedom and Discipline (RLE Edu K)

Questions of discipline and order arise wherever formal education is practised, and are particularly acute for those training to teach or in their first school posts. For many years now writing on these topics has tended to depict teaching as the deployment of ‘skills’ and ‘techniques’ and competent teachers as those who successfully ‘manage’ their classes. This approach is criticised by Richard Smith as manipulative and destructive of the kind of pupil-teacher relationship conducive to any but the most trivial sorts of learning.