Quiet Please!: A Practical Guide to Classroom Discipline

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

This practical guide to classroom discipline is a distillation of Alan Dowd’s own years of experience, both as an education student and as a classroom teacher. He remembers the difficulties of his distant, early student days, and with a sure touch for “illustrative material,” he uses anecdotal and often very amusing examples of his own and his fellow teachers’ adventures and misadventures to demonstrate the dynamics of the classroom. Theories concerning proper methods of discipline vary widely, and always have done, from the dismal old days of “Spare the rod and spoil the child” to the more permissive and understanding attitudes common to educational practice of today. One thing remains ever the same: the necessity of maintaining order if learning is to take place. “Discipline will always be at the heart of teaching for without it teaching ceases to exist.” The material contained in this thoughtful work should help to ensure the survival of the student teacher, as well as the likelihood of his or her classroom success.