Modern teaching ‘maximises misbehaviour’
Head of school discipline task force puts blame on child-centred education for classroom disruption
PROGRESSIVE teaching methods have fuelled the rise in poor discipline, the Government’s bad behaviour tsar has said.
Tom Bennett, who has been appointed by ministers to head up a task force into bad behaviour at schools, said that for several decades the issue has been “swept under the carpet”.
In his first interview since his appointment, he said progressivism – the dominant ideology in education which became popular in the Sixties and Seventies – has led to low level disruption going unchallenged.
“There was a massive assumption that children would behave if you simply planned lessons correctly, if you allowed them to do lots of independent work, project work, group work and so on, and that these teaching methods would create great behaviour” he told The Daily Telegraph. “I think that the failure of these methods to automatically create great behaviour has resulted in a lot of people in the education system pretending behaviour wasn’t an issue.”
Traditional teaching methods include “direct instruction”, where a teacher stands at the front of the class and presents information, drilling, where pupils repeat words or phrases after the teacher, and memorisation.
But these methods have been phased out in favour of the progressive “childcentred” learning methods.
“Progressivism rests on the idea that children want to behave and they want to learn, the teacher needs to step back and allow the child to explore their natural curiosity, which will motivate them and keep them engaged,” Mr Bennett said. But this relies on an “overly optimistic view” of human nature that “fails to take into account the difficulties some children face”, he said.
While this approach may work well for middle-class children, the same cannot be said for their peers from more disadvantaged households who may have not been taught how to behave by their parents, Mr Bennett said.
“Some children come to school with loads of social skills, they’ve been taken to museums, taught how to shake someone’s hand and say hello,” he said. “But if you are used to shouting out to be heard, no one has ever taught you how to wait your turn or share, you’re not going to change suddenly in a classroom. You wouldn’t think that is wrong, you would think that is normal.”
He said that these children need “support, they need really clear boundaries, and they need to be taught good behaviour too”.
Trying to use progressive teaching techniques for all children, regardless of their background, is a “very good way to maximising misbehaviour”, he said.
Earlier this month, the Department for Education (DFE) launched a new task force aimed at tackling bad behaviour in schools. Persistent disruptive behaviour is the most common reason for permanent exclusions in state schools, accounting for over a third (35.7 per cent) of all permanent exclusions in 2016-17.
The £10million crackdown, led by Mr Bennett, will focus on advising schools how to improve issues such as pupil attendance and punctuality and detention systems.