A former school teacher makes a good case for traditional teacher-centered classrooms.

Education requires discipline, both intellectual and behavioral, and discipline must be imposed before it becomes engrained. That’s the way it works for families as responsible adults raise their kids, and that’s the way it used to work in public schools when I started teaching eons ago. But all too often nowadays kids are left to raise themselves and teach themselves. Anyone watching the nightly news has seen the negative results.

To inculcate discipline in others, a leader must model excellence and self-discipline. Traditional teacher-centered classrooms had such leaders. By contrast, student-centered learning allows the inexperienced and the undisciplined to become the standard. Who then is the model for students when today’s teachers merely facilitate as “guides on the side,” leaving students to discover on their own?

HT: Joanne Jacobs