This passage is from Herbert Kohl’s “The Open Classroom”:
“Lesson plans are supposed to spell out what the teacher is going to do in his classroom
day to day, week to week, and even month to month. They are designed to make it
possible for administrators to say what ought to be happening at a given moment in all
the classrooms of their schools. They are also traps for teachers. If they are followed
consistently there develops a smooth temporal progression in the class from one topic to another, with little place for side issues, unexpected discoveries, and unplanned
conversations. If a story, or a mathematical concept, or a particular scientific problem is
provocative and sends students off in many directions, the lesson plan draws them back
to the curriculum and the orderly flow of time in the class day. There are a certain
number of stories or science experiments the class must go through during the school year. Digressions often make teachers feel nervous and guilty. If an hour is taken up discussing a side point the students will not be able to get through what they have to
during the school year.
Time in most schools is considered a precious quantity, and teachers are upset when
they feel time is wasted. But the conventional notion of “wasted time” is deceptive. In
fact time is wasted in school by all sorts of thing – taking attendance, lining up, collecting papers, rehearsing rules and routines. It is also, often wasted by going through material that bores everyone and is attended to only by pupils who are the most dependent on the teacher. When people talk to each other and find out about each other they are not wasting time nor is it wasted when students explore what is interesting to them…”
— Herbert Kohl, The Open Classroom