Student discipline

“ We sift as carefully as possible the student material which offers itself, and we try by every conscientious method to give to students who have character and ability such years of discipline as shall make them stronger, keener, and better for their peculiar mission. ”

“ Starting, then, with the principle that the period of mental discipline is closed at the end of the school career, and that those who pass to the university come with fair mental training and sufficient intelligence, let me inquire what should be the relation of university teaching to that which the student has received at school. ”

“ In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a University the force of living example should fire the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning; ”

“ The change has taken place in regard to what is expected of the college student; distrust has vanished and people realize that the intellectual discipline which he has had until his twenty-second year in the artificial and ideal world is after all the best training, less by its subject-matter than by its methods, is the best possible preparation for practical activity. ”

“ Law was pursued in this institution with all the plan and regularity with which any school is conducted. Recitations were held every day, and the lessons marked out. I admire this way of getting into the dry details of an uninteresting profession by the beginner. By getting lessons, short lessons, every day, at the end of a few months the student finds himself the master of much information and technical knowledge which he never would have attained by himself, without the severest self-control and discipline. ”

“ In accordance with these principles, the object of the system of college education in America has always been development and discipline of character, and the broad preparation of the student for his subsequent special or professional pursuits. ”

“ While every effort is made by those in charge of the school to make the students happy and contented, there is yet, an earnest belief in such strictness of discipline, compliance with regular duty, vigorous work with mind and body as shall train the character and fit the students for the important work that is before them in actual life. ”

“ The school also educates the will through its discipline. It demands of the pupil that he shall be obedient to the rules of order, and adopt habits that make it possible to combine with one's fellows. ”

“ The child must learn to control his whims and fancies, his impulses and inclinations, all of which are probably regarded with much indulgence at home. It has always been recognised that one of the chief functions of the school is to train the child in habits of obedience and order. The child is placed under the discipline of the school, in order that he may learn how to discipline himself. School-discipline is valuable only in so far as it is really training the child to govern himself. ”

“ The school as it is looks first after its discipline, and next after its instruction. Discipline concerns the behavior, and instruction concerns the intellectual progress of the pupil. That part of moral education which relates to habits of good behavior is much better provided for in the school than any part of intellectual education. ”

“ The school must and does use compulsion. Discipline is an important means of elementary school education, and such education is unthinkable without discipline. But children are sufficiently disciplined by mere attendance at school for a certain time. ”

“ But while he was putting in a perfunctory attendance at lectures, his education was proceeding in another school—the school which, as in his after years he so insistently testified, affords the only real discipline for life—the world of real men and women. ”

“ Firm after firm announces that their employees must have at least a good high school education. The mental discipline and self-control128 given by a good high school course will give self-direction and grasp of conditions to your boy long after the Latin endings and algebraic formulae which gave the discipline have been forgotten. It is discipline for life’s duties that is the real worth of the high school to the boy. ”

“ What we want to teach is interdependence, that efficiency waits on discipline, that discipline is obedience to the whole of which I am a part. Discipline has been a word long connected with school life—when we know how to teach social discipline, then we shall know how to “teach school.”
The object of education is to fit children into the life of the community. ”

“ The fine technique of the unconscious school as worked out by educators in normal schools and teachers’ colleges in the last forty years can be read in any current school survey. Here the coincidence of work and study with the child’s interests is accidental. Indeed, many parents and teachers are still opposed to making too large a part of the curriculum appeal to the child’s ephemeral interests. Discipline is still thought of not as willed skill, which it is, but as the ability to do painful things. ”

“ They are doing a variety of things, and there is the confusion, the bustle, that results from activity. But out of occupation, out of doing things that are to produce results, and out of doing these in a social and coöperative way, there is born a discipline of its own kind and type. Our whole conception of school discipline changes when we get this point of view. In critical moments we all realize that the only discipline that stands by us, the only training that becomes intuition, is that got through life itself. ”

“ In conclusion, therefore, shall we make moral character the clear and conscious aim of school education, and then subordinate school studies and discipline, mental training and conduct, to this aim? It will be a great stimulus to thousands of teachers to discover that this is the real purpose of school work, and that there are abundant means not yet used of realizing it. Having once firmly grasped this idea, they will find that there is no other having half its potency. ”

“ The school that is free in its teaching must be carried on by disciplined teachers, united in a purpose of progress clearly recognized and agreed upon, to teach discipline that the minds of men may dare to be free. ”

“ The school lesson would feed the mind, while the thorough, patient and conscientious acquisition of it would gymnaze the intellect and strengthen the moral force. Why have one class of studies for discipline only, and another class for nourishment only, when there are studies which at once fill the mind with the materials of thinking, and develop the power of thought,—which, at the same time, impart useful knowledge, and afford an intellectual gymnastic? ”

“ Disciplinary problems in the high school should be solved on the largest basis possible. The increased scope of vision enables a pupil to view a situation in the larger connections. In the grades each act tends to stand by itself. ”

“ How to establish the moral aim in the center of the school course, how to subordinate and realize the other educational aims while keeping this chiefly in view, how to make instruction and school discipline contribute unitedly to the formation of vigorous moral character, and how to unite home, school, and other life experiences of a child in perfecting the one great aim of education—these are some of the problems whose solution will be sought in the following chapters. ”

“ The object of such an education is not to put into the pupils so much History, Geography, French or Science, but, through these studies, to draw out their intelligence, train them to observe facts correctly, and draw accurate inferences from their observation, which constitutes good judgment, and teach them to think, and to apply thought easily to new forms of knowledge. Morally, the discipline of a good school tends directly to form the habits I mentioned above. The pupils are trained to steady industry and perseverance, to scorn dishonest work, and to control temper. ”

“ It should be part of every child's education. But many schools are too busy teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, and others are too busy preserving discipline, and others are too busy coquetting for the good will of their pupils and trying to amuse them—too busy to give heed to a set of habits that are of paramount importance in the life of civilized society. This school took up the matter of training in good manners as an essential part of its duty, and it accomplished this task quickly and effectively. ”

“ For example, lesson plans tend to formalism, to self-conceit, to work in few and narrow lines, to study of subjects rather than of pupils; lessons to fellow-pupils make one self-conscious, hinder the growth of enthusiasm in work, and are entirely barren if carried beyond a very few exercises; teaching groups of children for considerable time unfits the teacher for the double burden of discipline and instruction, to bear both of which simultaneously and easily is the teacher’s greatest difficulty and most essential power. ”

“ She must guard against any methods of teaching that will cause any child to dislike to study. It is quite certain that if first grade pupils finish their year’s work liking the teacher and the school and if they have acquired the habit of study and like it, that teacher has done her full duty. ”

“ So also we never fail to distinguish and carefully separate the two parts of the teacher’s work, his ability as a disciplinarian and his skill in imparting information, for it is an accepted commonplace of school technique that ability to teach is one thing, and the power 170 to maintain discipline is another. ”

“ Furthermore, what immediately follows has reference mainly to the lower grades, because there the child’s school habits are formed, but the teacher who is on the alert for principles that are fundamental will be quick to perceive that whatever laws are basal in the control and discipline of children in primary grades, are equally so for older pupils because they are laws that apply to all humanity. ”

“ The same problems, especially from the standpoint of punishments and rewards, are considered in the chapter which deals with the moral training of children. It may be well to add here that the problem of discipline is largely one of good teaching. Children who are hard at work seldom worry the teacher. Right conditions for work may play an important part. The consideration of some of the problems of organization is, therefore, in place in a chapter on management.
The ordering of the daily program is one of the most important elements in classroom management. ”

“ The only question worth raising in this connection is how far school-teachers and school-rules are taken to heart by the average boy or girl—how far they are made to apply to their notions and motives, when school is left behind. School-books, school-teachers and school-discipline are so apt to be bunched together and relegated to a special corner of the mind.
Our second group—the influence of example and imitation—has probably always been a more important factor in shaping conduct and character. ”

“ We never punish by the imposition of tasks, our aim being to inculcate the love of study, and encourage the child to regard his work as a favour and a privilege. On the contrary we now punish the student rather by taking away the old than by imposing new school work; and this is so effected that the boy, though at first delighted, soon thirsts to resume his studies. ”

“ Applying this principle to the work of the schoolroom, we see that no subject should be studied merely for the discipline it may be supposed to give. The old theory that the school should cultivate the senses, the memory, and the reasoning powers of pupils, means nothing as a matter of pure discipline; in the light of modern psychology we must understand that the only way to secure this cultivation is in special directions determined by the peculiar nature of the material upon which the mind is exercised. ”

“ But an Honours or M. A. class must have enough boys to make it possible to hold discussions, mutual criticism of papers written by the boys, and informal exchange of ideas by students of the same “school”. In such classes the teacher’s duty is to inspire and guide, the student must do his own reading and noting, and therefore the impact of keen young mind on keen young mind is absolutely necessary to stimulate, precipitate and clarify thought. ”

“ The measureless transformations of the adolescent period throw a vast majority of people out of sympathy with the adolescent and still more with those of younger years.
The system of school discipline advocated in this Course for teachers, frankly rests on coöperation with the pupil, initiative being taken by the teacher in working out disciplinary problems in frank, wholehearted adjustment to pupil needs and characteristics. No teacher can adopt the policy represented by this principle without attaining, in a measure, and further developing his own self-control. ”

“ The irregular class. Two ways of remedying the evil. Boys' love of system and regularity. Object of securing a majority, and particular means of doing it. Making school pleasant. Discipline should generally be private. In all cases that are brought before the school, public opinion in the teacher's favor should be secured. ”

“ And, indeed, the best teacher in the world could not attend properly to the mental needs of fifty children, nor even of thirty. Furthermore, this overcrowding makes necessary the stiff regulation, the formal discipline, in the maintenance of which so much of the teacher's energy is wasted. ”