Case study

One weekend, when Mokete was in town visiting friends, he bumped into an old teaching college friend, Ernest Kompecha. Ernest invited Mokete to his house to meet his family and they had a wonderful evening comparing memories and stories. Ernest loved reading, and after discussing the difficulties of teaching at a farm school, he told Mokete about what he had read recently. It was all about a man called Maslow and what he called a ‘hierarchy of needs’.

Maslow had a theory about human needs. He said that some needs are more basic than others and must be fulfilled before higher needs are felt.

He said that physiological needs are the strongest. Physiological needs are needs for the basics of life such as food, water, sleep and oxygen.

Once these have been met, the person will think about the need for security, that is, safety needs. As people start to feel secure and get potential threats under control, social needs come into play.

A person's needs for love, friendship, acceptance and understanding by other people and groups are all social needs.

These are followed by the need for self-esteem. This level represents the higher-order needs. These include a person’s need for self-respect and the esteem of others, and the need for success, self-confidence, recognition and appreciation of one’s achievements. You will agree that a teacher could play a major role in developing every individual learner’s self-esteem by emphasising positive behaviour.

The final need is for self-actualisation, ‘towards knowing and understanding, and towards deriving satisfaction from being sensitive to the beauty of human beings, their accomplishments and their natural environment’.

Maslow describes the self-actualisation need as follows:

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self- actualisation.’

Mokete thought deeply about his talk with Ernest and about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It made him understand many things about his learners.

Many of his learners came to school without having had their physiological needs met. Some of them left home so early in the morning to walk the long distance to school that they did not have breakfast. They would arrive at school tired and hungry, and Mokete would then expect them to concentrate in class when all they wanted was to eat and sleep. The other problem that could affect learners was the lack of fresh air in the classroom and the heat from the tin roof towards the middle of the day. Mokete realised that his classroom had very small windows, so ventilation was a problem. If his learners were falling asleep, it might not be that his lessons were dull, but that it was too hot.

Mokete then thought about safety needs. Luckily, at the farm school there was no problem with drugs or violence, but every now and then there were stories of ‘bad people’ being seen around the district. He decided he must be more aware of this, and if his learners appeared affected by the stories he must try to reassure them.

Safety could also be affected by what was happening in the learners’ homes. If a drunk or aggressive father beat and frightened his family, then those learners could hardly be expected to concentrate in school. Mokete decided he must try to learn more about his learners’ families and lives so that he could be more tolerant and understanding at school.

He knew that there was also some bullying in the school by older learners and realised that he would have to be on the lookout for this. Ernest had told him that this safety need was a problem in some schools because of the severe discipline and humiliation of learners by some teachers. He hoped that his learners never felt like that about him!

The need to be loved and to belong was one that Mokete was very much aware of. He noticed how some learners waited around his desk after school and tried to do things to please him. He occasionally got irritated by this, but realised that they might not have friends or might have unhappy home lives. Mokete had also noticed how some children were always left out when the learners were allowed to choose groups or teams. Mokete resolved to be more aware of this and to do more of the group organising himself.

Mokete realised that the need for self-esteem was an area in which teachers could be very important and effective. Learners who were successful should be praised, and those who struggled should be given help, not mocked and made to feel small in front of the class. Mokete realised that teachers could do a lot to make learners feel they were capable of achieving.

The final level of the hierarchy is self-actualisation, and even in the primary school Mokete knew that he could encourage the learners to aim for what they wanted out of life and to do the best they could. This could be as distant as aiming for a dream career, or as simple as doing the best they could in an assignment.

Ernest and Maslow had certainly made Mokete more aware of what he could do to improve his school and the lives of himself and his learners.

Mokete was looking at his learner file. For his own benefit he kept notes about his learners and their work. If he noticed anything special or different about a learner, he would write it down. He also kept notes on the progress of each learner. With so many learners in his classroom, he struggled to keep track of them unless he made notes.

As he flipped through his file, he noticed that he had had a few discipline problems at the beginning of the year. Knowing what he did about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, he looked at some of his notes in a new light. Little David had been very sullen and quiet, and Mokete realised that it had been because his mother had been so sick. Mokete had only found out about this later on in the year. Thembe had done almost no work for the first few months, and Mokete now remembered that her parents had both been unemployed. Maybe Thembe had not been able to concentrate because of a lack of food or just because of worry about her home life. The more Mokete looked at his notes, the more he realised how many things there were that could affect the way his learners behaved.

During a staff meeting, the principal confirmed that she had noticed that David’s and Thembe’s responses to teaching had changed. They agreed something had to be done about it.

But ... wait a moment ... Many teachers and parents feel that children misbehave because they have been accorded too many 'rights'! ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’, right?! Some teachers still lament the abolition of corporal punishment. What is your opinion on this issue? Think of one learner who has given you disciplinary problems. Can you explain the learner’s misbehaviour in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

If you do not already have a private learner file, make one of your own. If you have had any discipline problems with learners, write them down and see if Maslow’s hierarchy can help you explain why you may have had these problems. This file is only for your own use, and need not be shown to anyone else (Prinsloo and Van Schalkwyk, 2008:148).

Here are some of Mokete’s notes about why learners might misbehave:

The child wants to be accepted by peers.
Possibly the child is too young and does not know any better.
The child may be frustrated or bored.
Learners may be cheating to avoid being punished or because they do not like to make mistakes.
There may be problems at home, which means the child does not concentrate at school.
If there is poor discipline at home, the learner may treat the teacher with the same lack of respect as he does his parents.
The child may be doing piecework after school if the family has money problems, meaning that there is little time for homework; the child could also be very tired at school.
If the parents do not value education and criticise the school, then their children will treat school in the same way.
If there is much violence by adults in the area around the school, the learners may model themselves on these adults and defy the authority of the school.

Mokete also realised that there were other factors that could affect the behaviour of the learners.

School conditions make a difference to how the learners behave

If school rules were too rigid, learners might feel the need to fight them

Overcrowded classrooms make learners restless and irritable

Poor ventilation and extreme temperatures make concentration difficult.

The curriculum could affect discipline. The educator has to make sure that the curriculum is relevant to the learners and relate it to their lives, otherwise they will get bored and discipline problems will arise.

Educators could be a cause of discipline problems

If educators discipline learners by belittling or humiliating them, this could lead to even more discipline problems.

Preparation is vital for creating a classroom climate where learners are active and busy.

There will be no time for boredom and major discipline problems.

Educators have to set the example and behave as they wish their learners to do.

As Mokete looked over his notes, he realised that his discipline problems had largely disappeared, and midway through the year his teaching was going fairly smoothly. As usual, Mokete shared his ideas on discipline with his colleagues. They agreed with almost all the points he made. However, they could not readily agree on the point that teachers could be a major cause of discipline problems, and a debate ensued. Eventually they agreed that it was possible, and that it is important that teachers be alert to this possibility.