Civility In Classroom Discourse A Reflection

Civility in Classroom Discourse: A Reflection

Copyright (c) 2014 Jonathan Kenigson

It is incontrovertible that the median performance of U.S. secondary-school students lags behind that of many European students on a number of internationally normed metrics of academic achievement. My purpose in this brief article is not to pronounce another jeremiad over the supposedly bloated corpse of U.S. public education, but to provide a series of perspectives upon several oft-neglected facets of comparative education that ought to be discussed. In particular, I wish to advance the following (possibly controversial) tenet: U.S. secondary schools are, in my opinion, some of the best in the world - if by "best" one means that students and faculty have the greatest number of college and career opportunities after graduation.

Also, U.S. students learn to reason critically and not merely memorize and regurgitate information to instructors on high-stakes exams. In my opinion, these factors are illustrative of the ideological agenda of liberal Western democracy, in which individuals (and in particular students) are desired and expected to reason "beyond the text" and reach personal conclusions that can in turn be debated and negotiated. U.S. students and parents should be especially thankful for these positive traits that (in greater or lesser measure) undergird the ideological superstructure of education systems in the U.S. In a Hegelian sense, however, it is precisely this freedom and individualism that generates (from what I have observed) the greatest deficit in the U.S. education system: students who believe that comportment with decorum and civility in the classroom is unimportant and who, consequently, disrupt the learning environment.

From my investigation and personal experience in many major world education systems (British, Russian, U.S., and French), I can state with confidence that the U.S. system is the only one in which students who exhibit continuously uncivil behavior in the classroom (for instance: interruption, gross immaturity, sexual innuendo, chatting with friends instead of paying attention) are not merely removed from the learning environment so that serious and interested students can succeed. In most classroom observations I have conducted, student misunderstanding of basic concepts is due in no small part to students' general inattentiveness pursuant of the (generally unstated) belief that it is the responsibility of the teacher to provide entertainment instead of education.

I have found that consistently disruptive students in U.S. schools (proximally and for the most part) believe that it is the teacher's responsibility to merely ignore such behavior instead of confronting it head-on. As a consequence, such students miss important information and end up with mediocre grades, possibly hampering their future achievements.

By contrast, in most Bulgarian schools that I have investigated, students treat teachers with great respect, and are silent when the teacher speaks or presents material. Students know that difficult end-of-year exams will be objectively graded to a high standard; that extra-credit or "make-up" exams are impossible to obtain; and that failure to prepare for adequately for exams will almost certainly result in an inability to either study within Bulgaria's university system or abroad. This performance pressure can at times result in what I would perceive to be unhealthy levels of stress, but it also helps students re-conceptualize teachers as coaches whose job it is to prepare them for the "game" of summative exams instead of overlords who force the learning of irrelevant material. Instead of asking, "why is the teacher forcing me to learn this," students know that the state syllabus for exams is uniform, and that no matter what, they will be held to account for knowledge of the state syllabus on difficult national exams.

Consequently, most students desire to use class-time wisely instead of wasting it in various forms of uncivil behavior. Bulgarian students consistently score slightly worse on international mathematics exams than U.S. students, but the per-capita GDP of Bulgaria is roughly 20% that of the U.S. and a small gap in performance could perhaps be attributed to differences in school funding. The performance of the students is, in my opinion, instilled by a dread reverence for the difficulty of the national exams - all of which cast a long shadow over the secondary school experience.

The U.S. should not, in my opinion, adopt such teaching methods; rather, U.S. administrators should keep an emphasis upon free and open discussion and debate in the negotiation of ideas in the classroom. However, U.S. students should be held tightly accountable for upholding standards of civility in the classroom, and U.S. teachers should be given the right to expel students from the classroom for indefinite periods if continuously rude or uncivil behavior occurs. However, instead of using high-stakes exams to enforce this purpose, I believe that U.S. educators should desire to instill an ethic of civility in their students based upon the inviolability of civil discourse that constitutes the foundation of Western social structure.

Teachers should inaugurate students early and often into adulthood by modeling respectful speech to each other and to their students. For instance, instead of calling students by their first names, address them as Mr. or Ms. Teachers should strive to refrain from speaking in anger to students, but should rather strive to do so with due reciprocal respect. Teachers should strive to learn students' names and offer them the benefits of civility (perhaps a time for tea in the common room; perhaps a time after class once a month to convene and discuss matters in a free and relaxed atmosphere). In any case, however, it should be the responsibility and privilege of the teacher to gently remind students when the rules of civility have been breached, and to provide a constructive reminder that numerous breaches would result, ultimately, in dismissal from the public forum and isolation to work where counterproductive and rude behavior would not influence the dynamic of the class.

In order to facilitate this shift, administrators and politicians should develop a modicum of trust for the discretion of teachers to provide an appropriate learning environment, and should tirelessly support teachers in modeling the discourse desired in democracy. The public should see politicians and administrators unified in their support of teachers and in granting teachers the authority to provide definitive but gentle discipline when the rules of propriety have been breached.

In future submissions, I shall likely clarify these points more exhaustively; my purpose here is merely to limn the topography of a liberal pedagogy of discourse drawing from my experience in alternative systems of education. It is also my ultimate hope to discuss, in detail and in future submissions, what the rules of civility demand of teachers and learners in a more comprehensive assay of environments.

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