A vitally useful book in understanding how best to manage behaviour in a classroom. Too often, teachers rely on shouting and ranting as pupils to get them to focus. While this works sometimes, it has a remarkably short shelf life, especially if the teacher's voice fails them because (inevitably) their throat is going to go. Plus, what do you do if a student is not intimidated but entertained by the teacher shouting and making a show of themselves before them? They sit back, smile, even laugh at how their refusal to do as they're told has made the teacher a much more entertaining class clown.
This is a book that many may dismiss as being too soft on children, not being hard lined with them enough. I thought so too, but then, as Roger's implores, think back on who you as a student liked as a teacher, or would have liked. Not a shouter, but someone who worked to understand your perspective and was a reasoned, assertive leader within the classroom, able to quell chaos by simply showing they held the biggest stick in the classroom rather than using it.
Roger's rules are simple and that is precisely why they are so effective - forced choice, directing over ordering, patience over insistence, being an adult rather than being a shouter or a friend to the students. End of the day, children actually want to be told what to do and it is up to the teacher to do this in the most effective way. By treating them as people, not animals.
Definitely hard recommend this book to any teacher starting on their careers, especially ones who want to discipline a class with a method beyond shouting but with routine, respect and showing your pupils you care about them as individuals, because, that's what education really is: not moulding the students to get a perfect result in an exam, but moulding them in to decent people who can go out into the world and live a life that positively impacts others.