Lately, the ministry of education published a document entitled `Good behaviour and discipline policy for schools`.
This policy document is meant to offer "broad guidelines that would enable school communities to develop their own Code of Behaviour and Discipline" (p.47). It thus respects the particular identity of each school and accepts the fact that they operate in a particular social environment.
It follows, therefore, that each school must respond to the needs of that particular environment with differentiated policies that cannot be imposed from above.
A second very important point is the fact that the school is not seen as an airtight institution with idiosyncratic views of the world. Rather, it is a learning community where various sectors of society are both stakeholders as well as beneficiaries of the educational institution. It identifies school administrators, teachers, support staff, students, parents and the local community as pertinent stakeholders. Continuous interaction between all the actors makes the school more democratic in the way the American philosopher John Dewey envisaged for his schools (Democracy and Education).
The policy document also takes a positive view of discipline and codes of behaviour. It not only lays down what is prohibited but rather emphasises what is desirable. And the emphasis seems to be on the setting up of a Deweyan learning community. It emphasises `humanistic values` (p.47). The code of behaviour and discipline that each school is to draw up must have the person, as a member of the learning community, as its central focus.
As such the code must not be prohibitive but conducive to a positive learning environment. This is no easy task. Many times it is easier to ensure the easy running of the educational institution by fostering a sense of submission towards the established order. In this sense, non-conformists are simply seen as troublemakers to whom some sort of punishment must be meted out for not obeying orders from above.
On the contrary, this policy document sees the enforcement of discipline as a way of ensuring a learning environment where the learning community interacts in a process of continuous learning. The drawing up of the code of discipline itself becomes an educational process for the participating stakeholders. Of course, this is not a way of being that is easy to achieve. The educational institution as a democratic learning community is not a point of arrival but a never-ending learning process in itself.
In this sense, discipline and modes of behaviour are not handed down from above but originate in the participants themselves (p.59). As the latter participate in the process, they internalise a code of behaviour that lends itself to the common good. The voluntary internalisation of norms of behaviour within an authentic learning process (John Dewey, Democracy and Education) is directly opposed to the internalisation of an oppressive code of behaviour that represents the powerful disciplinary gaze of the oppressor (Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish). The dividing line between the two ways of being in an educational institution is very fine and it is very important to be aware of the incumbent danger in order to ensure an authentic ongoing educational process within our schools.
In the light of what has been argued above, the suggestion for a system of "class points for positive class-based behaviour as part of a Class Points Accumulation System" does not make any sense at all.
Positive behaviour is intrinsically rewarding and cannot be ridiculed by such a simplistic reward system. Besides, there is already enough competition between students, institutionalised through streaming. Making good behaviour a matter of competition between students is something to be avoided at all costs. This would be a way of going against the grain, a way of changing the present unjust way of segregating students according to a very limited number of conventionally selected abilities and skills.
Finally, the policy document also mentions an `Evacuation Procedure Due to Threatening Situation` (p.65). This is directly linked to the question of health and safety standards inside schools.
I know that certain schools carry out evacuation drills on a regular basis. Certain schools have also used such drills in order to pinpoint eventual hazards. But this is not so for other schools. In a certain school I know of, no drill has been carried out, at least since last September. There also exists a great risk for all the school community: Several hundred students in the upper floor only have access to the lower floor through a long narrow corridor with narrower doorways at regular intervals leading to a single staircase. No emergency stairs are available. The whole school population on both floors has access to the street through one single door that is about five feet wide. Passing from policy making to policy implementation in this case would be no easy task.
On the whole the policy document is a very positive proposal. It is now up to the separate schools to make good use of it by drafting the separate codes of behaviour.
I would personally go for a minimalist approach. By this I mean a code of behaviour that ensures the maximum of personal liberties and creativity. It would be a code that does not try to fit the children into straight jackets but one that liberates and empowers. It would be one that ensures positive social interaction and respects the rights of the stakeholders to have a true say in policy making in areas where the local community`s well being is at stake.