All of our daily decisions have moral implications. Our everyday choices can be viewed as value statements. Where do we shop and what do we buy? What do we read? Who are our friends? How do we treat those who are different from us? Where do we get our "news"? Do we share our riches? What do we care about? What do we think about: Global warming? Corporate control of the media? The migrant farm workers who pick our vegetables?
These questions and our ensuing actions have a moral foundation. As teachers we can bring these issues into our classrooms and invite our students to think about them to help them form their moral identities and, hopefully, to live their lives with goodness.
True goodness comes from within , and that's the goal of a more democratic philosophy of classroom management: helping kids become managers of themselves by helping them to develop and shape their "self," including character and self-discipline.
This exploration of goodness can be connected to classroom management and student discipline. Rather than using classroom management to "manage" students, it can be an important part of our curriculum by helping children grapple with complex moral issues. They develop their own sense of goodness and how they should behave both outside and inside the classroom, not because they are told to "be good" but because it is the right way to act in peaceful and caring communities. By helping students explore and discuss those outside-the-classroom issues-like racism, classism, or global warming-teachers can help them to shape their own senses of right and wrong, good and bad, justice and injustice.
When I taught elementary and middle school, one of the most important parts of our day was our class meeting. Class meetings were regular opportunities for students to engage in open talk and debate. Open discussion was important in my classroom throughout the day and across the curriculum, but class meetings were a time for the entire class community to come together and discuss topics that didn't have to connect directly to what we were studying in other parts of our curriculum.