------ "In many situations, including the classroom, where a group of people with a common goal are gathered, collective punishment can, and almost always does, develop a self regulating code of practice enforced by the majority." ------

Casuistry. You assume that the classroom is a place where every person has a common goal, and the inference from the way in which you have worded this, is that you believe this to always be true. In fact, it is not. And even when it is, it is likely only true only insofar as authority deems their personal goals common to the classroom. (I, the teacher, and the government which governs me, have decided that you, the children, must spend time in a classroom, whether you want to or not. You must learn. This is therefore our common goal). Such a position is in fact tyrannical, not unitarian. You imply by proxy of your first assumption that such a goal can be self-justified. I argue that forcing children into educational scenarios against their will, teaching them information which they do not find interesting, nor have asked to learn, is not self-justifiable: it requires justification outside of itself. There must be moral and social justifications for this (which, of course, there are many of), however, even when there are justifications, those justifications must be scrutinised in the context of their application. It is for instance, justifiable to forcibly educate children on the premise that without education they will not be able to gain monetary income for their self-sustenance, however, the argument can also be made that education itself is a form of self-propagating the values which maintain the status-quo which allows impoverishment in the first place. It is the circle of indoctrination begetting indoctrination. And there is a very strong argument to be made for adopting educational policies which allow investigation outside these established norms, particularly in political and economic discourse. As always, dissent is the greatest form of protest, and children, like adults, ought to have the right to it.

------ "Forced discipline by one's peers is the best form of maintaining order as, in the classroom it is an early illustration of 'the few' having to conform to the accepted and required standards of the majority, or, in short, democratic rule."

"Order" in social contexts is a relative term. One person's "order" is another person's tyranny. And this distinction, and the right to express it, is what underpins and sustains true democracy. What you refer to sounds much more like forced conformism, which leads to some sinister mutation of democracy: ochlocracy derived from the unjust use of authority. The teacher, though he or she knows many students to be disinterested dissenters, punishes the group as a result of the dissent of one individual. Thus, even though much of the group may be dissenters at heart, their focus then becomes the student responsible for dissenting. They no longer dissent, for fear of the punishment, and they use the dissenter as the scapegoat for their woes. Dictators use the same tactics, all over the world. In a true democracy, the few should never have to conform to standards which are fundamentally unjust, nomatter the will of the majority. There are things we hold to be illegal and there are things we hold to be frowned upon. Murder is illegal, but nonviolent dissent, in its worst light, is no more than frowned upon. It is not illegal to dissent. We would not expect adults to contend with being told that they must sit in a room for six hours per day, being force-fed information, told when to eat, told when to pee, when to leave, without ever having had any say in the process. Why should children, by justification of age only, have to endure what adults will not? That is not democracy.

Further, it is a fundamental requirement of a truly democratic society that the status quo is challenged, if only by individuals retaining their sense of individuality and their own identity. This exact premise is succinctly illustrated in the way in which Americans will refer to themselves as "African-American", "Italian-American", "Irish-American". The very fabric of democracy rests upon individuals' rights to freely express opinions without suppression or fear of institutional reprisal. These freedoms are of course, today, becoming ever more tenuous. Better that we raise a world of freethinkers and champions of rights than a world of conformers and cowards.

------- "A self regulatory system of control in the classroom removes most of the responsibility for applying any unpopular punishment processes from the teacher and this in turn reduces the development of a ''them and us'' mentality."

Wrong. A them and us mentality is immediately created, either between the students and the teacher (as the students see the punishment of the many as unjust), or between the students and the dissenter (whom the students wrongly see as the cause of their punishments). What you describe only exists in an alternate universe where all children are rational and thrilled to be schooled.

------ I'm certainly not advocating any form of physical force or intimidation, but a clear indication by the majority to the rouges that their disruptive classroom behaviour is unacceptable.

Who's to say the majority don't agree with the dissenter? Again, you're assuming that most or almost all of the students WANT to be there and WANT to learn. That's a very big assumption to make. When I was in school, most students did not want to be there: they'd much rather have had the playgrounds and fields than the pencils and books. The job of a good teacher (much like many of mine were) is to inspire, not to dictate. A child learns much better when he or she buys into what the teacher is doing. Like any form of childcare, teaching requires empathy and consideration, and the ability to utilize methodologies which are contextually appropriate for each individual child. Punishing a group for the faults of their peers is woefully old-fashioned: it does not work. Any developed country recognises this. We don't punish an entire community because one member of it committed a crime, for good reason.