When I taught in School, whether elementary, secondary, undergraduate, graduate and religious classes, I bumped into “free will” or spontaneous eruptions and a whole lot of passivity. As a classroom teacher, much less a pundit type of professor writing articles and participating in conferences, I found that the ultimate test of skill in the teaching profession was in treating each student as a person and not as “Now, Class, do this or do that”. Getting to know each student individually as a person was easy for me but I have never been sure if I got to the essentials of each. We tend to compartmentalize them and group them for the teachers’ convenience and they grouped themselves into more or less three major groups other than the “ins” and “outs”.  There were the bright ones, the “with it ones” and the slow ones. There were at least one or two who were pariahs and responding to being identified and picked on responding by becoming the type. The egg-head was resented, particularly if embarrassed by getting the top marks in class.  The slow students, the ones that were embarrassed by not understanding what was going on, were unmercifully tormented.

I noticed that children most often look to others to see what they are doing and copy that behavior.  In some rare instances, some children look to the teacher for direction and often become little teachers themselves.  There are little communities in schools.  There are the compliant types.  They believe what the teacher says is true and try to follow what are simple rules of work hard and try to understand. There are the free spirits, the class clowns and the dare-devils who go their own way but have adoring followings.  There are the vast numbers of undistinguished “get-a-longs” who try not to be noticed too much.  And then there is the entire class that a teacher can mobilize by making education fun and a game and let them have a part in designing it. This is difficult for the didactic types.

There are also the war factions which begin out in the street and bring their conflicts into the classroom where there is sometimes the climate that needs a good riot to reach full expression.  I have followed most of these carefully when they disrupted my teaching.  I always tried to get to know each of the participants and the whys and wherefores and get them to write down the history of the events. I eventually got this down to a science and gave the papers back until they were as letter perfect as possible and when I saw that the heat of conflict had dissipated I put the papers in my desk drawer to be brought out if the wildfire started up again.

You have to know each student personally and have a relationship with them that transcends just doing the work the class requires.  This is difficult and I think I was largely successful because I liked most of the kids who liked me and worked hard to understand the others who smoldered with resentment for being there.