Teaching Matters/PROF TOM COLLINS:At any one time there are up to 800,000 children in Irish primary and second-level schools. This is about 20 per cent of the population. In addition, there are in the region of 51,000 teachers employed in these schools throughout the State.

It is true to say then that schooling is at the core of Irish society, both in terms of tackling contemporary issues and laying the foundations for dealing with future ones. With regard to second level specifically, there is a growing concern in the media and elsewhere around the issue of disruptive behaviour and indiscipline on the part of students. This was the subject of a major report published by the Department of Education and Science last year.

It is correct that these concerns be voiced, explored and responded to. Failure to so confronts teachers and the whole school community with problems of stress and frustration which impede the progress of the general body of students in the classroom and is attritional on the morale, motivation and even the health of teachers.

While recognising that the recent incident in Clondalkin, Dublin is indeed very disturbing, it is important to take the wider view. A useful starting point, therefore, might be to ask not why there is so much disruptive behaviour in Irish second-level schools but why is there so little?

As an outsider looking in, Irish second-level schools are remarkably orderly places. These schools manage large groups of teenagers in relatively confined spaces, with an authority that is typically benign and pastoral in focus but military-like in its precision and clarity. Every 40 minutes or so multiple class groups, each of 30 or so students, pour out of their respective classrooms onto narrow corridors and move from one classroom to another with little incident and few casualties i.e. the great majority arrive at the pre-ordained destination on time and relatively unscathed. Once there, each student takes a position in a pre-assigned desk, speaking mostly only when spoken to and attempts to come to terms with a wide range of abstract issues whose immediate relevance may still be somewhat unclear - as in the difference between an abstract noun and a common noun or the delights of Euclidean algebra.

Some of these children have special behavioural or emotional needs. Some have troubled backgrounds. All are dealing with the challenges of growing up. Furthermore, according to an OECD survey of 2002, about 60 per cent of them are bored at least some of the time.

No society should underestimate the level of professionalism and commitment needed to maintain such an unstable compound in the relative quietude and order that characterises most second-level schools. It is precisely because the discipline and organisational culture of these schools is so tight that even minor transgressions can assume major significance. Such transgressions are frequently purely symbolic - as in the wearing of prohibited jewellery or flouting the school uniform conventions. Symbolic or not, they consume an inordinate level of attention from the teaching staff, who are prone to see any act of defiance as potentially undermining of an authority which they must be forever vigilant to protect.

Holding this line is extraordinarily demanding on the emotional and psychological well-being of the teacher. It saps the creative energy of the school and dominates the professional discourse of the staffroom.

One must not assume, of course, that a peaceful and orderly surface does not mask a subterranean world of turbulence and disorder. The work of the TCD anti-bullying centre, for instance, suggests that even in primary schools the social world of children, concealed from adults, can be a cruel and vicious one.

Perhaps even more importantly we should not confuse a manifestation of orderliness and compliance with active engagement by the student body in the academic project of the school. While this kind of active and generous commitment is sometimes evident in school events such as sporting competitions, annual musicals or school open days, it is less likely to arise in the day-to-day work of the classroom.

While there will always be a logistical rationale to the tight management of a large group of adolescents in a school setting, the pedagogical value of this culture is open to question. The challenge then is to shift the basis of order in the school from one of containment to one of engagement: from one of passive compliance to active agency.

There are many aspects to this transformation. Foremost among them is the need to empower teachers in the co-creation of the syllabus with their fellow professionals and with the students themselves. In Hardy's Return of the Native, his idealistic if ineffectual hero, Clym Yoebright, aims to set up a school which would instil "high knowledge into empty minds without first cramming them with what has to be uncrammed before true study begins."

The second-level teacher has little if any control over what is taught in schools and only slightly more control over how it is taught. As E A Holmes put it, back in 1912, when reflecting on the impact of the recently developed state-prescribed syllabus in Britain, what this did to the teacher, it compelled the teacher to do to the child - "the teacher who has been deprived by his superiors of freedom, initiative and responsibility, cannot carry out his instructions except by depriving his students of the same vital qualities".

A new basis of discipline in schools, predicated on the active engagement of the students in self-directed learning would begin from a starting point of trust in the students. We can only get there by first trusting the teachers.

Prof Tom Collins is head of education at NUI Maynooth