For the purpose of this assignment I am describing a scenario that may occur in a real-life classroom. This scenario highlights how teachers need to follow different approaches to successfully work with children of different temperaments.

In his book (Introduction to Integral Education: An Inspirational Guide, 2006) Shraddhalu describes three broad types of temperament we see among children.

· The children of first type temperament understand by explanation. As their minds are intellectually oriented, they listen to words and change their actions accordingly when explained appropriately.

· The second type of temperament is found among children who are emotionally oriented. We have to address and move their emotions, and tap their sense of self-respect.

· The third type of children are those who are materially oriented, live in sensory experience. They need to see the consequence of their actions in order to learn.

The episode I am describing here takes place in a school, where teachers follow several principles and practices of progressive education. An important characteristic of this school is that the rules and regulations are flexible and can be changed according to the needs and circumstances of individual children.

But as it often happens, this flexibility is sometimes taken as a license by some children to do whatever they want. In the particular situation under discussion the class III (age group 8-9-10) teacher witnesses such a situation in her class. Some children of her class have started coming late to school and as a result are missing the warm-up session before going to football, basketball, gymnastics and other outdoor games and sports.

This teacher believes in dialogue method, so she assembles the class one day and talks to them about the importance of warm-up session before proceeding to any strenuous sports. She tells them that the body needs to be plastic so that injuries may be avoided during sports. She requests the children to come on time so that they can be a part of the warm-up exercises.

The following day a few children of her class turn up on time and she feels very happy that her approach has worked with them. But still a few children didn’t come on time.

She has by now also learned that that a couple of children who are coming late have siblings in other classes. She talks to the class teachers of the siblings and finds out that they are also coming late to the school. She speaks separately to these late-coming children and their siblings and learns that because of one child’s delay the others in the family also get delayed. With the co-operation of other teachers, she arranges a group meeting for these children who are affected by the delay of their brothers or sisters.
An interactive session pursues, which goes something like this:-

Teacher 1: “Dear friends, do you know why you are invited for this meeting? There is something common among you all. Think for two minutes and tell me what is common among you all.”

Silence reigns for a couple of minutes. And then children start guessing.

Praneeta (class 6 student): “Is it because we have sisters and brothers in other classes?”
Rakshit (class 7 student): “I know, yesterday I fought with my brother Ritwik and my Mom must have reported it to you. Probably you people have received similar complaints from other parents too.”

Kiranmayi (class 5 student): “No, I don’t think so. I did not fight with my sister Simathi. Perhaps, our teachers want to stage a drama in which they want us to participate and we can give a fancy title “tan tadan tan, the sibling’s drama.”

Everybody laughs.

Teacher 2: “Pragnan, Komal, Puneet, Prithvi, David, Damini you are all silent. What do you think about other’s reasons?”

Pragnan: “Madam, I think we are here because we are coming late everyday and you want to talk to us about this.”

Teacher 3: Yes, you may be right. How many of you agree with him?”

An uncomfortable silence follows and one by one the hands rise in affirmation and within a minute the teachers see that all the children raise their hands.

Teacher 1: “I am glad we have consensus here. I wonder what could be the reason for this latecoming?”

Praneeta to Pragnan: “You wake up late every day that is why we are late to school.”

Pragnan: “I wake up late because you occupy the bath room in the morning. What do I do meanwhile, so I sleep till you leave the bathroom?”

Ritwik to Rakshit: “It is entirely your fault. You take so much time in dressing and combing. You want to impress the girls. That is why we are delayed.”

Like this the game of blaming each other goes on among the children.
Teacher 2 (smilingly): “Now we know the reasons. Instead of blaming each other let us find a solution to this problem.”

Finally the children realise that they have to cooperate with each other, sort out their schedules and depart.

The next day the teachers are happy to see all the children on time except Praneeta and Pragnan.

Praneeta tells the teachers that Pragnan again woke up late and as a result she too was delayed. The same trend continues for three more days. Finally their parents are also called for a meeting. In discussion with the teachers the parents come up with a plan to show Pagnan the consequence of his action.

That night before his bedtime Pragnan’s mother calls him and says that if he doesn’t get up on time the following morning they will drop Praneeta to school and Pragnan would have to go school on his own or stay home.

The following morning irrespective of his mother’s wake up calls Pragnan continues sleeping. Praneeta’s father drops her at school and goes to his office.

Pragnan wakes up late and decides to stay home because he doesn’t want to walk alone to the school. TV at home was not working (it was unplugged purposefully by his parents). He reads for a while. He plays alone for some time. In the afternoon he comes to know that children of his class watched one of his favorite movies and they also had clay modeling class, which was also his favorite activity.

The next day also same events repeat and now slowly he starts missing his friends, teachers and school.

The third day his mother sets alarm clock for 6.00am and tells him it is up to him to wake up or not.

Lo! It worked. Pragnan gets up at six and decides to go to school with his sister. His mother and father congratulate him for getting up early in the morning and Praneeta and Pragnan reach school in time.

In the above episode we see a few children listen to the reasoning given by the teachers and act accordingly. These children are of the first type (intellectually oriented) temperaments

During the group discussions emotions of some children were touched and it had a positive effect on their behaviour.

Finally, in the last case of Pragnan we see that he was of such temperament that he had to be materially shown (though in a gentle way) the consequence of his action in order for him to mend his ways.

Comments on the assignment by course facilitator, Beloo Mehra

Dear Lakshmi,

First of all, let me congratulate you on doing this excellent assignment which shows us in a very practical way how some of the concepts we are learning about can be applied in real-life situations. Well done! I think you have given sufficient thought to how teachers and parents can work with children of different temperaments and help them improve their behaviours or solve other problems. I also appreciate the fact that you thought of involving parents also in this practical example. It is really important that teachers/school and parents think that education of the child is a shared responsibility and closely interact with each other to help the child make progress. Generally we don’t see that happen in most schools. The only time parents are involved is to help with the children’s homework, help arrange for extra tuition classes, basically encourage children to study hard, and attend parent-teacher meetings or other functions at school. But as your example shows there can be ways for teachers and parents to collaborate closely for a very specific objective to help the child make progress in a particular area.

As you mention at the beginning of your example, this situation is happening at a progressive school where teachers are encouraged to collaborate with each other (as it happens in this case) and pursue problem-solving processes that involve dialogue with children and other teachers. In such a school children too are used to such kind of open dialogue with their teachers and are not uncomfortable or threatened at such situations. In most conventional schools where children rarely have such an opportunity (and instead they are just ‘told’ or ‘ordered’ to do such and such or be punished if they fail to do so), such an approach that you present here will certainly not work. But then, in such conventional setting there would not be any attention paid to different temperaments of children and that is the reason why only a very direct and linear — behaviour-reward or behaviour-punishment — model would be prevalent. This helps us understand that most or perhaps any of the concepts and ideas/ideals of Integral education that we are learning about cannot be applied in isolation. In fact, what we need is a complete overhauling or rethinking of the way a school is structured if we want to put into action the ideals of integral education.

I also appreciate the point that the teacher in your example is referring to the children as “dear friends”. This certainly shows the attention you pay to such important details. Good thinking!