Learning for every child starts from obedience, or to be more precise not learning, rather instruction start from notion of obedience. Nobody would argue that obedience or compliance, on the part of a child to more knowledgeable and, therefore, authoritative adult, is essential for any meaningful education. Yet, excessive obedience can be a source of mental sluggishness, passiveness and silent acceptance of everything an authoritative adult imposes. Children must understand the reasons behind obedience, rather than doing what they told. At the same time responsible disobedience must not turn into anarchy and chaos, in other words, a child should know the difference between disruptive and self-asserting behavior. The difference between disruptive and assertive behavior is essential to teaching responsible disobedience to children.
A teacher who undertakes to teach children responsible disobedience must have a good understanding of the two behavior modes; his ability to convey the difference, while teaching children to behave in assertive rather than disruptive manner is the key to success to the educational endeavor of teaching responsible disobedience. Definitions and essential qualities of the assertive and disruptive behavior should be spelled out. Alberti and Emmos in their book Your Perfect Right give the following definition of assertive behavior, behavior which enables a person to act in his or her own best interest, to stand up for herself or himself, without undue anxiety, to express honest feeling comfortably, or to exercise personal rights without denying the rights of others.(p. 27) This brief definition requires some explanation. Ability to defend ones own position and rights without infringing the rights Acting in ones best interest incorporates making independent thoughtful decisions concerning ones own life like building relationships, setting and pursuing goals and timing activities. A child relevant version would include things such as choosing the games he/she wants to play, the extent and mode of class participation.
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This part also means taking initiative like starting conversations or suggesting in-class activities. It is vital to explain to children the importance of understanding self in the context of a situation before any meaningful action, since nobody lives in vacuum. Particularly children should care about other people feelings and dispositions, otherwise their behavior will not be constructive. Skill to defend ones own position and rights without infringing on the rights of others as well as ability to express sincere feeling comfortably essential to any responsible behavior including disobedience. Children should be able to identify situations where they wanted to say know to the demands of a figure of authority or an instance of when they wanted to break or broke a rule. It is never enough to stress the importance of understanding the demands, ones own position and consequences of disobedience before defying any rule or authoritative demand. To make the lessons more meaningful assertive and disruptive behavior should be contrasted.
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Disruptive action is not neutral and generally positive as assertive, but disrespectful, offensive and/or threatening. In case of classroom, it interferes with learning by distracting other students, preventing Instructor from delivering study material and disrupting common class activities. A distinctive feature of disruptive behavior is trespassing of other peoples rights. Often it hurts their feelings too, for example, it can compromise the sense of self-dignity. Disruptive behavior is counterproductive as opposed to assertive: it provokes retaliation because others freedom is threatened and naturally people respond to the threat by taking measures to uphold their freedom, at the same time assertive behavior implies respect to other people and seeks the same from others. In teaching responsible disobedience, form is equally important to the content.
Responsible disobedience is undoubtedly a part of assertive behavior, which an assertively thinking person can exercise in certain situations. As physiological and social skill assertive behavior needs practice. Practice can be delivered in form of role games following with discussions. Practical activities can be augmented by knowledge drawn from physiological and social works on the topic. The issue can be vividly illustrated by the history of Civil Rights movements. History has great examples of responsible disobedience, like the struggle for equal rights for racial minorities. In delivering topic of responsible disobedience, the genuineness of the action should be emphasized, without it an act of disobedience losses any sense.
Therefore, imitation or inappropriate usage of disobedience in everyday life should be discouraged, otherwise it can lead to negative experience with the students and their parents and/or other adults, thus greatly compromising the learning on this important and often noble expression of human freedom..
