This research examines the book Habits of Goodness: Case Studies in the Social Curriculum by Ruth Sidney Charney. The research will set forth a summary of the book's structure and content and then discuss how the principles of classroom management and student development described in the book could be applied in the real-world elementary-education environment.
The overall plan of Habits of Goodness can be characterized as an attempt to show teachers, especially at the elementary-school level, methods that they can use to create a meaningful structure of communication in the classroom that is based mainly on the acquisition of social, rather than academic skills. That does not mean that academic content is to have secondary importance but rather that in order for such content to reach meaning in the classroom, its environment needs to be made conducive to the learning process. That may seem like a roundabout way of saying that classrooms need discipline and that teachers should not relinquish their authority and expertise to disruptive students; however, what Habits of Goodness aims at is not so simplistic. Rather, its focus on specific techniques for getting rid of bad classroom behavior by eliciting what could be called "buy-in" and internalization of socially acceptable speech and demeanor on the part of the kids.
Beginning from a theory of the teacher's role in the classroom as a social problem solver quite as much as an academic instructor, Charney develops the view that elementary school is as important for social as for academic training. That is why the distinction she immediately makes between focusing on "class disruptions" as an obstacle to teaching and the systemic or process-oriented "roadblocks that inhibit[] [student] growth" is so important (Charney, 1997, p. 1). Recognizing that many children's bad behavior is less an obstacle to their learning than their inchoate social skills becomes the first step of good educa...