Discipline
A Serious Study for Parents
Discipline is not punishment – What part does discipline play in your
system of education? Discipline is often used as euphuism for
punishment, so our mind is put into an attitude of protest. Let us refrain
from protest and have a closer look at what discipline should
encompass.
The parent who would educate his children, in any large sense of the
word, must lay himself out for high thinking and lowly living; the highest
thinking indeed possible to the human mind and the simplest, directest
living.
This thought of discipline, for example, is one of the large
comprehensive ideas which must inform and direct the life, rather than
be gathered up into a rule, easy to remember and easy to apply, now
and then, If Tommy is naughty, whip him and send him to bed – is a
ready-reckoner kind of rule, handy to have about one, and is the sort
of thing which many people mean by discipline. Now we would not
say that punishment is never to be used, very much otherwise. Neither
would we say that physic is never to be taken. But punishment, like
physic, is a casualty only of occasional occurrence at the worst, and
punishment and physic alike are reduced to a minimum in proportion
as we secure healthy conditions of body and mind. We are not
anxious to lay down canons for punishment.
Punishment by Consequences – A child should be punished by the
natural consequences of his offence To carry this suggestion out au
pied de la lettre would often enough mean lasting, even fatal, injury to
the child, bodily and mental. You cannot let the indolent child be
punished by ignorance, or the willful and adventurous child break a
limb; but, so far as punishments have been allowed to become
necessary, the nature of the offence gives one a clue to a suitable
punishment. The child who does not eat his porridge goes without his
plum. This is, anyway, a punishment in kind, perhaps the nearest
approach to natural consequences which it is advisable to try.
Children rather Enjoy Punishments – But parents should face the fact
that children rather enjoy punishments. In these they find the
opportunities, so frequent in storybooks, so rare in real life, for showing a
fine pluck. The child who is in punishment is very commonly enjoying
himself immensely, because he is respecting himself intensely.
Heroism in Bearing Penalties – There is a bit of heroism in the earing of a
penalty which is very apt to do away with any sense of contrition for
the offence; and the plucky little fellow, who takes his punishment with
an air, is by no means a bad and hardened young offender; but is an
economist of opportunities, making the best of what comes to hand for
his own real education. His mother’s distress, his father’s disapproval,
these are quite different matters, and carry no compensating sense of
hardihood. Reflections like these lead one to spare the rod, not at all
out of over sensibility to the child’s physical suffering, for we must have
him endure hardness if we mean to make a man of him, but purely
because it is not easy to find a punishment that does not defeat its
own ends.
Wrongdoing followed by its own Penalties – The light smart slap with
which the mother visits the little child when he is naughty, is often both
effective and educative. It changes the current of baby’s thoughts,
and he no longer wishes to pull his sister’s hair. But should not the slap
be a last resort when no other way is left of changing his thoughts?
With the older child a theory of punishment rests less upon the necessity
to change the culprit’s thoughts than upon the hope of forming a new
association of ideas that is, of certain pains and penalties inevitably
attached to certain forms of wrongdoing. This, we know too well, is a
teaching of life, and is not to be overlooked in education. The
experience of each of us goes to prove that every breach of law, in
thought, or deed, is attended by its own penalties, immediate or
remote, and =the child who is not brought up to know that ‘due follows
deed, in course,’ is sent out to his first campaign undrilled and
untrained, a raw recruit.
Our contention is twofold; (a), that the need for punishment is mostly
preventable; and (b), that the fear of punishment is hardly ever so
strong a motive as the delight of the particular wrongdoing in view.
Punishment is not Reformative – If punishment were necessarily
reformative, and able to cure us all of those ‘sins we mind to,’ why, the
world would be a very good world; for no manner of sin escapes its
present punishment. The fact is, not that punishment is unnecessary of
that it is useless, but that it is inadequate and barely touches our aim;
which is, not visitation for the offence, but the correction of that fault of
character of which the offence is the outcome. Jemmy tells lies and
we punish him; and by so doing we mark our sense of the offence; but
probably, no punishment could be invented drastic enough to cure
Jemmy of telling lies in the future; and this is the thing to be aimed at.
No, we must look deeper; we must find out what weak place in
character, what false habit of thinking, leads Jemmy to tell lies, and we
must deal with this false habit in the only possible way, by forming the
contrary habit of true thinking, which will make Jemmy grow up a true
man. ‘I think I have never told a lie since,’ said a lady, describing the
single conversation in which her father cured her, when she was a
child, of lying by setting up an altogether new train of thought.
Good Habits the best Schoolmasters – Not mere spurts of occasional
punishment, but the incessant watchfulness and endeavor which go to
the forming and preserving of habits of the good life, is what we mean
by discipline; and, from this point of view, never were there such
disciplinarians as the parents who labour on the lines we would
indicate. Every habit of courtesy, consideration, order, neatness,
punctuality, truthfulness, is itself a schoolmaster, and orders life with the
most unfailing diligence.
A habit is so easily formed, so strong to compel. There are few parents
who would not labour diligently if for every month’s labour they were
able to endow one of their children with a large sum of money. But, in
a month, a parent may begin to form a habit in his child of such value
that money is a bagatelle by comparison. We have often urged that
the great discovery which modern science ha brought to the aid of
the educator is, that every habit of the life sets up, as it were, a
material record in the brain tissues. We all know that we think as we
are used to think and act as we are used to act. Ever since man
began to notice the ways of his own mind, this law of habit has been
matter of common knowledge, and has been more or less acted upon
by parents and other trainers of children. The well-brought-up child has
always been a child carefully trained in good habits. But it is only within
our own day that it ha been possible to lay down definite laws for the
formation of habits. Until now, the mother who wished to train her
children in such and such a good habit has bound herself hindered by
a certain sense of casualty.
Always Telling – ‘I’m sure I am always telling her’ – to keep her drawers
neat, or to hold up her head and speak nicely, or to be quick and
careful about an errand, says the poor mother, with tears in her eyes;
and indeed this, of ‘always telling’ him or her is a weary process for the
mother; dull, because hopeless. She goes on ‘telling’ to deliver her
own soul, for she has long since ceased to expect any result; and we
know how dreary is work without hope. But, perhaps, even his mother
does not know how unutterably dreary is this always ‘telling,’ which
produces nothing, to the child. At first he is fretful and impatient under
the patter of idle words; then he puts up with the inevitable; and
comes at last hardly to be aware that the thing is being said. As for
any impression on his character, any habit really formed, all this labour
is without result; the child does the thing when he cannot help it, and
evades as often as he can. And the poor disappointed mother says,
‘I’m sure I’ve tried as much as any mother to train my children in good
habits, but `I have failed.’ She is not altogether dispirited, however.
The children have not the habits she wished to train them in; but they
grow up warm-hearted, good-natured, bright young people, by no
means children to be ashamed of. All the same, the mother’s sense of
failure is a monition to be trusted. Our failures in life are, perhaps, due,
for the most part, to the defects of our qualities; and, therefore, it is not
enough to send children into the world with just the inheritance of
character they get from their parents.
Some Practical Counsels – Let me offer a few definite practical
counsels to a parent who wishes to deal seriously with a bad habit. First
– Let us remember that this bad habit has made its record in the brain.
Second – There is only one way of obliterating such record; the
absolute cessation of the habit for a considerable space of time, say
some six or eight weeks. Third – During this interval new growth, new
cell connections, are somehow or other taking place, and the physical
seat of the evil is undergoing a natural healing. Fourth – But the only
way to secure this pause is to introduce some new habit as attractive
to the child as is the wrong habit you set yourself to cure. Fifth- As the
bad habit usually arises from the defect of some quality in the child it
should not be difficult for the parent who knows his child’s character to
introduce the contrary good habit. Sixth – Take a moment of happy
confidence between parent and child; introduce, by tale or example,
the stimulating idea; get the child’s will with you. Seventh – Do not tell
him to do the new thing, but quietly and cheerfully see that he does it
on all possible occasions, for weeks if need be, all the time stimulating
the new idea, until it takes great hold of the child’s imagination. Eighth
– Watch most carefully against any recurrence of the bad habit. Ninth
– Should the old fault recur, do not condone it. Let the punishment,
chiefly the sense of your estrangenient, be acutely felt. Let the child
feel the shame not only of having done wrong, but of having done
wrong when it was perfectly easy to avoid the wrong and do the right.
Above all, ‘watch unto prayer’ and teach your child dependence
upon diving aid in this warfare of the spirit; but, also, the absolute
necessity for his own efforts.
An Inquisitive Child – Susie is an inquisitive little girl. Her mother is
surprised and not always delighted to find that the little maid is
constantly on voyages of discovery, of which the servants speak to
each other as prying and poking. Is her mother engaged in talk with a
visitor or the nurse – behold, Susie is at her side, sprung from nobody
knows where. Is a confidential letter being read aloud – Susie is within
earshot. Does the mother think she has put away a certain book
where the children cannot find it – Susie volunteers to produce it. Does
she tell her husband that cook has asked for two days’ leave of
absence – up jumps Susie, with all the ins and outs of the case. ‘I really
don’t know what to do with the child. It is difficult to put down one’s
foot and say your ought not to know this or that or the other. Each
thing in itself is harmless enough; but it is a little distressing to have a
child who is always peering about for gossipy information .’ Yes it is
tiresome, but is not a case for despair, nor for thinking hard things of
Susie, certainly not for accepting the inevitable.
The Defect of her Quality – Regarding this tiresome curiosity