Maintaining classroom discipline

In the past two weeks I have had two classes in which students remarked how quiet I was. While shouting or constantly talking in a loud voice may hold the students' atatention and aid in being a task manager, it's against my character to do so. Perhaps it is the only way the attention of an unruly class can be held. (But it certainly wasn't necessary with those two classrooms.) If I wouldn't educate my children in that way, why should I do so when teaching the children of others? I don't see Don Bosco teaching in such a manner.



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Some have praised the strictness of American teaching nuns of the past. (I read a few grateful remarks in connection with Meryl Streep's Doubt.) Their use of corporal punishment is often jutified by former students as well. But was their way really correct? Or were they so successful because they were simply better classroom managers than their secular counterparts? While they may have been able to educate American Catholics in the three Rs, is their legacy as positive as some who remember the fondly think it is? How much did they really deviate from the American industrial model of mass education? How do groups like the Nashville Dominicans or the Ann Arbor Dominicans maintain classroom discipline now?

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