3625. Liberty in Our Classrooms for Our Students to Grow Up

 Once upon a time the subdirector or sub-principal of the school where I worked, and this happened more than twenty years ago, told me that of course I had to keep classroom management and discipline, but also I had to bear in mind that ultimately my students were free. 

Free to act as they thought better, in that classroom, I add now. 

And that made me think, it did. I was a novice teacher. Yes, they are free, as human beings they are. 

Jutta Burggraf said that any authority problem starts from a problem of knowing how to order and ask to do, for example at a classroom. 

If you want to be listened to and obeyed by your students, well, do not give a lot of orders. We have to insist on the essentials in the classroom, yet we should not give many orders. And leave liberty to act subsequently. 

And leave our people to be free. And let them be free. 

These ideas are partly by scholar Jutta Burggraf. 

We have to leave our students to act as they think it is okay. Few commands, for a lot of creativity from our students. Well, creativity will come from a lot of input by our students, from us their teachers, as Gregorio Luri accurately says. Input plus their thinking over that input. 

I mean that there should be liberty in our classrooms, in this precise sense I’m telling you about. 

Otherwise if we want to exert a too much comprehensive, thorough and omnipresent command upon our students, well, you know, we could be quenching, extinguishing, putting out, suffocating and strangling our students’ capacity of… well, of just living and enjoying life and being happy. And growing up. And working.

Classroom management, yes, not to allow our students to live, no. 

Another different issue is that perhaps we teachers have to give clear instructions to them so they may be capable of for instance carrying out an activity. Common sense. Have a nice day, fellow teachers and readers.

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