Balance Between Freedom and Discipline

How to Achieve Balance

Freedom in the classroom allows learners to be free thinkers, question authority, and to think creatively. However, this freeom needs to be balanced with structure, referred to as discipline.

We cannot be free without structure. If we do not have a goal to pursue, there cannot be freedom.

Before balance is achieved, teacher and learners will need to collaborate and negotiate so everyone understands the structure.

There’s no formula for balance, it is more about intuition: “Thoughtfulness on everyone’s part” (Parker Palmer, 1983) and knowing your classroom.

With freedom, both teacher and learner are renewed, refreshed, and redirected.

Freedom is "to act on their power to choose, to question, to resist, to have and to develop varied perceptions"

- Maxine Greene

"Freedom is the goal and discipline is the strategy used to get to that goal"

- Friedman

"A teacher cannot liberate someone else if that teacher is oppressed or not free"

- Greene

"There is no guarantee of success, failure or interpersonal harmony"

- Greene

For the clip to the right: In the movie, Dead Poet's Society, Mr. Keating gives his students freedom to allowo them to be free thinkers. He knows his structure works and that giving students freedom is not demeaning his authority in the classroom.