Solving Classroom Discipline Problems
Your Instructor: James Thompson
Lesson 01
Chapter 2

Why Today's Children Are Different

What worked for our teachers not only may not work for us, it may actually work against us. We need a new game plan.

    —Dr. Jane Bluestein

As I start this chapter, I am reminded of the movie Pleasantville, in which two teenagers are magically inserted into an old television sitcom reminiscent of Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best. The sitcom life reflected the traditional values of the 1950s, featuring perfect parents, obedient children and a fire department solely devoted to rescuing kittens from trees.

To a great extent, the values of this not-so-bygone era were based on the demands of an industrial society. Factories wanted workers who could follow orders. Uniformity was the goal, not innovation or initiative.

These values were reflected in the families of that time where authority relationships reigned, and the do-as-you're-told mentality was not questioned. Parents' expectations were rigid and misbehavior was met with swift punishment. This approach to discipline was readily accepted by a society that was focused on churning out factory workers who could follow directions and not make waves.

Those Leave It to Beaver years are now gone. With the vast technological developments of the past few decades, we have moved from an industrial to an information society. This new society, with its new economy, demands a different set of work skills, such as interaction, innovation, negotiation and communication.

A child's world today is much larger than it was in the past. There is greater access to information. Children are much more aware of the world around them. Thanks to television, children are bombarded with visions of successful, happy people.

More often than not, the media-portrayed successful people have not earned their success through simply following directions or taking orders. These people have succeeded by meeting the needs of the new information society through initiative, innovation, risk-taking, individual thinking and taking responsibility for their own lives. Is it any wonder then that our children resist authority figures who attempt to control their behavior?

If you grew up with authority-based relationships, as I did, you are apt to try to apply those industrial-age techniques to your students. Whether or not you actually liked being brought up in an authority-oriented, do-it-for-your-own-good world, you probably accepted it and naturally sought to use the same approach in your classroom.

However, when we apply industrial-age techniques, we interfere with children's opportunities to develop the skills they will need in an age structured on a different set of needs and values.

What is needed, therefore, is an approach to discipline that is in sync with today's society—an approach that not only prepares children for an information-oriented society but also promotes and encourages their personal development as caring, responsible members of that society.

Why should we be concerned about the type of person our information society requires? What does that have to do with discipline at school? To answer those questions, consider what should be the ultimate goal of education. Is it not to prepare children to be happy and to succeed once they leave school? Of course it is. To accomplish this, to give our children the knowledge, skills, and experiences they need to succeed, we must first understand the requirements for success in our society.

To better understand the difference between the industrial and information ages, compare the following sets of characteristics.

Characteristic	Industrial Age	Information Age
Skills	Follow orders Listen Don’t make waves	Take initiative Be innovative Be independent
Relationships	Parents make and enforce rules Goal is obedience Dependence on parents	Parents make rules, encourage self-enforcement Goal is responsibility Independence, self-control
Discipline	Children make few decisions Punishment for misbehavior Critical, focus on unwanted behavior	Children encouraged to make decisions Consequences for misbehavior Recognition, focus on wanted behavior

A key difference in discipline for the industrial and information ages has to do with decisions. Children raised with an industrial age do-as-you're-told approach don't have many opportunities to make decisions. They may have difficulty solving problems or anticipating the outcome of the choices they make. Obedient children may also have trouble accepting responsibility for their choices. They are more likely to blame someone or something outside of themselves for anything good or bad that happens to them. These children will say things like: "It wasn't my fault. He started it."

To become responsible, children have to be taught to make choices and accept the consequences of those choices. To do this, we have to understand more about choices and what motivates children. That is the subject of the next chapter.