On Discipline in Schools

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last week you have no doubt heard about the 6th graders who engaged in full out sexual intercourse in a classroom with a teacher present. Today’s entry is not about this incident. Rather, today’s entry is about the reactions I’ve heard related to this incident. As though on cue, the “kids are outta’ control” crowd is having a field day.

Last Friday I listened as one commentator railed against the lack of “discipline” in today’s schools, and then prescribed his solution to the problem. His list of actions to take began with every school requiring school uniforms, or they don’t get any federal dollars.

I must admit that I am incapable of hearing a call for uniforms in school without also hearing a replay of comedian George Carlin’s routine where he talks about watching old movies of kids going to school wearing uniforms, but having trouble understanding them as they were all speaking German. It’s a good line, and I do have some concerns about uniforms being prescribed as the solution to the rather complex problems we are facing in our schools, but the truth is that I don’t have a huge issue with uniforms per se. My issue is with uniforms in a mandatory setting. If students and parents have a choice about attending the school, fine -- uniform away. But if they are there under government mandate and have no real option to attending that school, then uniforms begin to bother me a bit.

But I may take up the question of uniforms, as well as many other issues related to today’s educational system, in a future blog. The point I want to make today is about the call for discipline itself.

Anytime anything happens in a school, lack of discipline is the first battle cry. Over this din I often hear only my lonely little voice pointing out a belief that whatever the problem du jour is, discipline is not the answer.

When we speak of discipline, and a brief visit to a dictionary will confirm this, we are speaking of training to act in accordance with rules, and punishment inflicted by way of correction and training. Remember, however, we are applying this to a group of people whose needs are not correction, but development. Young people are engaged in a process where they are seeking ways to meet their physical and social needs and build competencies. Rules and punishment do not help human beings develop -- and a call for punishment as a means of preventing problems seems to me to be self-evidently wrong. What young people need are boundaries and guidance. In other words, they need structure.

Is there a lack of discipline in schools? Sure, but where appropriate structure exists, there is a greatly reduced need for discipline. As we engage in the on-going debates about problems in our schools, in which I will periodically participate through this blog, I’m going to consistently assert that there is a difference between discipline and structure, and that the latter is a far preferable approach.