Author Description
The A Classroom Experiment in Moral Education describes a way in which the principle of encouraging children to find out for themselves and to conduct their experiments with the raw material of common everyday objects—so well understood in the earlier years of schooling—may be adapted to help older children understand the world of persons.The Bullring is a free-discussion lesson; in it the children push the desks to one side, and, with the teacher, sit around in a circle facing one another. Their task is to study their behavior as it occurs and the teacher's task is to help them to do this. What distinguishes the Bullring from an ordinary discussion period is the freedom of students to say what they like and just about do what they like. The Bullring tries to provide a safe area in which young adolescents could find out for themselves what sort of persons they and their friends and their enemies were in relation to one another. It thus attempts to extend the principle of free discovery into the realm of personal relationships, to help children to discover themselves and to discover a morality by which to live.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
How can the principles of free discovery and experiential learning be adapted to teach moral development and interpersonal understanding to older children? A. J. Grainger, an educator, presents a framework for a classroom practice known as the Bullring. This method utilizes a non-hierarchical, open-discussion environment where students analyze their own behaviors and social dynamics in real-time to foster self-discovery and ethical reasoning.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- The pedagogical theory behind free-discussion lessons for adolescents
- Practical instructions for configuring the classroom environment to facilitate open dialogue
- The role of the teacher as a facilitator rather than a traditional authority figure
- Case studies on student interaction and behavioral observation
Scope Limits
- The text focuses primarily on the specific Bullring method and does not provide a comprehensive survey of all moral education theories
- It does not address long-term quantitative outcomes of the experiment
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Educators and researchers often cite this work as a specific, practical intervention for fostering social-emotional learning in middle-school settings. The text is noted for its clear, procedural focus on classroom dynamics and its historical contribution to student-centered pedagogical models.
Page Count:
172
Publication Date:
1970-03-12
Publisher:
Elsevier
ISBN-10:
0080069738
ISBN-13:
9780080069739
Moral Education
Pedagogy
Education
Social Studies