Do you worry that today’s children tend to take a laissez-faire approach to manners? Do you believe that modern kids have less respect for authority?
If so, you might despair of the fact that hundreds of schools have now banned the word ‘please’ from their teacher’s vocabularies – but all is not as it appears.
The schools are among the first 250 in the United States to sign up to the No-Nonsense Nurturing programme, an idea designed to encourage teachers to be specific and to hold high expectations for every student.
The rationale? To put teachers in the ‘power seat’ and leave zero room for children to misbehave. In short, disobedience is not an option.
“When a teacher is giving an expectation, the word please is not necessary,” Denise Watts, learning community superintendent at North Carolina’s Druid Hills Academy told ABC News.
“The best analogy I can use to describe my thinking about it is no one would say, ‘Would you come to work today, please?’”
Fans of the technique, founded by former principal Kristyn Klei Borrero and taught by the Centre for Transformative Teacher Training, believe it motivates children of all levels to excel academically and can transform classroom culture overnight.
Detractors fear No-Nonsense Nurturing may hamper communication between teacher and students, removing emotion from daily interaction.
Do you think stricter expectations would help your child achieve more at school? Let us know on Twitter @HerFamilydotie.
