Kids+have+to+sit+still+and+listen+in+order+to+learn

Kids have to sit still and listen in order to learn - Danna Revis
So much time seems to be spent in the classroom organizing kids (or adults) to sit still and listen. As Smith says in __The Book of Learning and Forgetting__:

//We can learn without effort if we are interested in what we are doing (or what someone else is doing), free from confusion, and given assistance when we seek it. All of this is something we all know implicitly, even if most of the time we don't think of it because learning in this way doesn't demand conscious attention.//

Certainly there are times, and possibly times each class period, that learners must listen. But do they have to sit still? Does the teacher have to call them out and embarrass them in order to keep order? Maybe just allowing kids to stand sometimes would help, but that's not my main point.

There are probably times these days that it seems necessary to keep order this way because schools have fallen into this paradigm - the "Official Theory of Learning and Forgetting", as Smith calls it. Kids know that they can disrupt class, get called out by the teacher and this gives them certain social standing as a "tough" kid. The teachers and adults consider this social tool negative, but for many learners it is probably a deflection technique they use to cover the fact that they are having trouble learning according to the official theory. They use the negative feedback to reinforce their claim that school is worthless and that they would never get ahead because the teacher doesn't like them. Or they are just establishing to the world that they don't care so that their lack of progress makes sense to them.

It would be much more productive for the teacher to reflect on why their learners are not engaged in the material. Is it the teaching method, the level of study or the relevance of the material that is causing the kids to disengage? If there are just a few disengaged kids, then perhaps the material is appropriate, but certain kids are not engaged. If these kids have built up a social wall to becoming engaged as mentioned above, the teacher would be much better served by trying to remove the barrier than by reinforcing it with the negative feedback. Seymour Papert says, “The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge.” (Quoted in Richard Saul Wurman, Information Anxiety 2‎ (2001), 240)

It would definitely take some innovative approach to truly address this phenomenon in today's schools where structure is the key strategy for maintaining order, but still possible once the teacher gets past his or her resentment of the disruptive student. There are certainly teachers that are able to engage nearly every student. Although perhaps rare in schools, these teachers should be the shining examples, but often it seems the teachers who do the best job engaging their students are held in lower esteem by other faculty, at least from my perspective as a parent looking in. I speculate that they are "breaking the rules" of Smith's official theory, making them upstarts among their colleagues.

Many teachers who engage in the negative feedback cycle probably perceive themselves as working towards the good of the many at the expense of the disruptive few. But they would probably serve the needs of the many better by trying to remove the barrier the disruptive kids have built, allowing the students to become engaged and eliminating the disruption entirely.