My Thoughts about Discipline

Discipline is to instill self-discipline in students, and discipline students when they misbehavior. Though there may be no one cause for misbehavior. I came to believe from experience and readings that one of the causes for misbehavior is the result of the thinking of the student. Student’s actions merely reflect his thoughts. I feel that one of the integral parts of the discipline process is instruction, by teaching students to think about the soundness of what they want, relative to how they presently perceive what they are getting and to how they are attempting to accomplish their goals as it relates to the norms about behavior signaled through the school rules and code of conduct.

Currently, most of my school programs are designed to control the actions of students, with very little thinking involved. Students names are called during assembly, they are told to stand for a specific amount of time, and they are often scolded. When these efforts fail, the students are given detention or suspension for a specific amount of time from school, and the students are assumed to return to class or school, somehow they have learnt to behave in accordance school rules and code of conduct. What is your experience with such process of discipline? Does it work?

I am more incline to believe that we cannot control the students’ behavior. Trying to control students by only rewarding or punishing them does not instill self-discipline – but rather teaches the students to manipulate and try to “cheat” the system. Trying to control the students also does another thing – irritates them. And the more the students are irritated, the angrier they get, leading to serious and intentional misbehavior. At the present moment, punishment seemed to be the only means of correction for our students, which I feel may not be sufficient.

Hence, I believe that in addition to punishment, we can help to develop self-disciplined students by teaching them to think responsibly for themselves. And the only way for teachers to help students do this is by asking questions.

My ideal school is one where our students feel a strong sense of belonging and ownership to the school, supported by conducive school climate for learning where students have been given the opportunity to learn the necessary social skills so that they can think and so act responsibly. This is what a good discipline program should have.