Richard L. Curwin

Discipline With Dignity is a book that deals with the difficult world of academic discipline, especially with troublesome children. It pertains, primarily, to school-age children up through high school.

While the subject matter in the book is a bit dated (students able to actually TOUCH the children!?), the psychological principles seem to make sense (says the non-teacher): don't expect anything from the students you wouldn't expect from yourself, don't get caught in power plays (c.f. the Dollar Auction), try reverse psychology on students who systematically fail to get homework done, positively reinforce for good behavior, and, of course, punish bad behavior.

While I never actually intend to teach children, I found some of the concepts in this book to be helpful and informative. I probably wouldn't not recommend this book to a teacher, however. Solely, at least. I would rather suggest a teacher find a selection of recent publications dealing with in-school discipline practices before just taking this one and running with it (it could have potentially bad side-effects, being that the book is about 20 years old).

But, if you're interested in some practical advice that can be applied to several different aspects of life, it may be worth reading. But, again, there are many better, more recent books for that.… (més)