The Bullring

The Bullring: 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.

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Background to the Idea

The Task in the Bullring—Children Studying Their Own Behavior

A Free Setting in which to Do This

The Risks

The Psychoanalytic Background

2. Bullring 1

Freedom in Practice with Young Adolescents

The Management of Aggression

3. Group Dynamics

An Approach to Understanding the Group's Behavior

Dependency, Fight-flight, etc.

4. Bullring 2

Further Problems Created by Freedom—trust and Ambivalence

5. The Rules and the Setting

Acting-out

The Prevention of Anarchy

The Need for Some Structure

6. Authority and Anxiety

Dealing with Anxiety

The Fear of Freedom in Teachers and Children

Acquisition of Inner Authority

7. Moral Education

How Children Choose When They are Free to Do So

8. The Bullring and the School Community

Teachers Attitudes towards the Bullring

The Value of Permissive Discussions for Staff Groups

A Short Bibliography

References