Recently a close friend of mine was talking about how to get students to behave well in school. It's a question that all teachers face and is an even bigger issue for parents!
It's easy to think about what kinds of discipline and what rewards and punishments are most appropriate etc (and these are of course useful and important).
But when pondering on and praying about this question I was reminded suddenly of something I'd heard from an author called Don Miller. "We all want to live inside a great story" is something he says.
The problem is that the story that society (and this is something that both the east and the west seem to have in common) tells our young people is that to succeed is to be comfortable. You need to study hard to earn well to buy everything you need and have a secure life (and then die).
But young people don't buy this! Why? Because it's a boring story!!
This idea may appeal to someone who's already tired of life's trials and tribulations, but to a young person who's searching for their role to play in this world, the idea of just jumping through the required hoops for security doesn't cut it. Therefore they want to try things, to test their boundaries, sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad way.
So back to the question of the secondary school students and their behaviour. Is it possible to give an alternative role, for them to enter a story in which they get to play heroes? How do we give our young people something important enough to live for that drugs, pornography, gangs, violence etc cease to be seductive ways to test the limits of life and instead become unwanted distractions on the road to changing the world?
Don Miller tells the story of a father who's family relationships are breaking down (particularly with his daughter who doesn't want to do what he says and has an 'unsuitable' boyfriend). Having fought with her for a long time he's confronted with this idea of giving his whole family a better story. He stops the shouting and criticising and instead simply lays down a challenge for them: to raise the money for an orphanage in Mexico that will save the lives of the children who can live there. As they all take on this challenge, not only do they start to reach the goal and change the worlds of these children, their own relationships together are also transformed!
Is it possible to translate this principle into our schools and homes, to give young people the opportunity to play the role of hero that deep down they're longing for?
