Britain’s children have a behaviour problem because teachers see issuing orders as ‘oppression’, official behaviour … – Telegraph.co.uk

British children have a behaviour problem because teachers think telling them what to do is "oppressive", the Government's behaviour tsar has warned.

Former teacher and behaviour expert Tom Bennett, who was appointed by the Government in 2015 to examine behaviour in schools in England, said that there is a "national problem" with pupil behaviour which is not being taken seriously enough.

In a report he said teachers were afraid that telling pupils what to do would curtail their freedom.

Students must become "compliant" in order to be free, he said, and teachers' worries that telling them what to do would be oppressive was an "impediment" to better behaviour.

Under a section titled "Is expecting good behaviour oppressive?", he said: "The belief that directing student behaviour is harmful to their development is a serious attitudinal impediment to developing schools with better behaviour cultures".

He added that pupils had to be taught "self-restraint or self-regulation" in order to be "truly free".

In the report he said: "To be in control of ones own immediate inclinations or desires and fancies, is a liberty far more valuable than the absence of restraint.

"Compliance is only one of several rungs on a behavioural ladder we hope all our students will climb, but it is a necessary one to achieve first."

Quoting Russian-born philosopher Isaiah Berlin, he added that schools should not simply discourage bad behaviour but encourage "good habits of study, or reasoning, or interacting with adults, coping with adversity, or intellectual challenges".

The report suggested that behavioural issues in schools were more serious than the Government realised because Ofsted reports and headteachers' views did not accurately represent the scale of the problem.

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Britain's children have a behaviour problem because teachers see issuing orders as 'oppression', official behaviour ... - Telegraph.co.uk