ABSTRACT
Students are taught that they have choices about how to behave, and that their own recognisability as credible and competent students will depend on learning to make the right choices. The person-centred counselling style of Carl Rogers and its corresponding humanist approach to discipline arise from a more pragmatic version of this ‘romantic’ view. Combined with the notion of the inherent goodness of human nature, the view of children as competent feeds into a constructivist approach to education and egalitarian discipline. Despite claims of a deterioration in student behaviour, evidence suggests that since the 1990s there has been a slight improvement in rates of school-based behavioural difficulties. Behaviours that do not violate anyone’s rights are generally considered to be fairly minor. The humanist approach to school discipline has its roots in the progressive education movement, whose founders include John Dewey, Maria Montessori and Friedrich Froebel.
