Unmet needs or unformed character?

One of the things that drives teachers crazy is the idea that children who misbehave are communicating "unmet needs," which the school adults must understand and fulfill. Often that means giving the miscreant a snack and sending him back to class.

Children aren't angels, writes Robert Pondiscio. In The Science of Discipline, which offers strategies for "empowering educators and engaging students," Nathan Maynard asks educators to see misconduct  not as "signs of defiance or character failure but clues to something deeper: a missing skill, an unmet need, emotional overload, or a breakdown in human connection."

But not every kid who acts out is a trauma victim, Pondiscio writes. "Children, no less than adults, succumb to impulses of selfishness, dishonesty, cruelty, and the desire to test limits." Educators have to do more than understand these impulses. They have to shape and restrain them.

Schools are among the first institutions where young people learn that freedom is bounded by obligations to others, that impulses must sometimes yield to shared norms, and that character is formed through habits of self-command. To deny children this moral education is not an exercise in empathy; it is an abdication.

Maynard urges teachers to teach the behavior they want to see, writes Pondiscio. For example, the disruptive talker might be assigned to lead a discussion, so he'll learn the importance of everyone taking turns and listening. The defiant student might be assigned a leadership role in a class activity.

Pondiscio suspects that "the student who repeatedly talks over a teacher may not need an outlet for an untapped gift for public speaking" and "the defiant student may not be a frustrated leader awaiting recognition." Sometimes, kids know what's expected but don't do it.

Furthermore, discipline isn't between the adult and the child, he writes. "Elevating the disruptive student to discussion leader or responding to defiance with a leadership role may signal to every quietly cooperative child in the room that misconduct is rewarded with attention and authority rather than met with corrective accountability."

Effective discipline is based on "clear boundaries, predictable consequences, and the moral formation that comes from learning how one’s actions affect other people," he writes.

Maynard envisions the school as "a therapeutic enterprise charged with healing, affirming, regulating, and repairing," not a place to cultivate character, writes Pondiscio. But healthy schools need "adults capable of understanding children and institutions capable of shaping them," he writes. "Certainly, behavior can be communication. It can also be choice, habit, temptation, and character in embryo. Schools must learn to recognize all these realities at once."