"Discipline" is More Than a Verb

Ron Rubin
Safe Schools Consultant
Vermont Department Of Education
E-mail: rrubin@doe.state.vt.us

I grew up in a family of artists. My father was a textile designer and my mother painted portraits. Both of my parents had studios within our home, and as a young child I often had the opportunity to watch them work; I'd be happily engaged on the studio floor with my toys and they would draw and paint. I readily recall their focused attention and steady hands moving pencil or brush while creating what, to me was absolute magic.

Sometimes they never even lifted a pencil or brush but would just sit for hours at their drawing tables doing nothing at all--or so it seemed. One day I asked my father why he was just sitting around. If he wasn't going to work on his designs, why didn't he do something else?

       "I am working," he responded emphatically. He went on to explain that creating textile designs required being "disciplined."

       "I know what that is," I said. "If you're bad in school Mrs. Arkin tells you that you need to be disciplined and sends you to Dr. Amdur's office."

       "No, no, no," my father said with a chuckle. "I don't mean that kind of discipline. You see, quite a lot of the time I don't have any ideas for a design, but that doesn't mean I don't have work to do. On those days, my work is sitting at my drawing table and thinking-- trying to come up with an idea for a design."

       "Why don't you go outside or take a walk?" I asked.

       "Sometimes I do. But it's hard not to be distracted. I have to concentrate and think really hard. So I sit at my drawing table until I come up with something. That's what I mean by being disciplined."

I never fully understood what my Dad meant until much later in life. However, the experience of being in his studio and the message it conveyed took hold. Observing his patient hand as he painstakingly rendered a series of tiny flowers into a pattern for a necktie--or simply watching him concentrate--was powerful testimony to the relationships between self-control, creativity, productivity, and high-quality endeavor. Discipline was a duty that my Dad felt he owed to himself and his work. As a result, early on I was what most people would call self-disciplined. It was something I learned from my parents, a set of skills and values.

In my current work with school communities that are trying to increase their capacity to meet the needs of students who exhibit challenging behaviors, the word "disciplined" almost always comes up. When it does, it's usually used the way my teacher, Mrs. Arkin, used it--as a verb indicating action to be taken in response to breaking rules. In the common parlance of schools, being disciplined ordinarily implies doing something to someone rather than having acquired a set of skills and values.

I don't find this reference point to be particularly surprising. Our school communities are increasingly faced with the daunting challenge of helping all students achieve high standards while simultaneously responding to increasingly frequent incidences of disruptive behavior. But I do think there's a bit of irony embedded in this circumstance and perhaps even a touch of sadness. Extrinsic rewards and punishments don't motivate or create truly self-disciplined, responsible people anymore than they are effective in producing genuinely good thinkers. If doing something to rather than with students were an effective teaching strategy, we'd have a nation of wonderfully responsible, exceedingly skilled children and young adults.

Becoming a self-disciplined, responsible, and appropriately behaved member of a school community infers learning skills and values every bit as much as learning the skills and values of any other content area. It means moving far beyond simple compliance and obedience and developing among students the kind of higher-order thinking and creative problem-solving skills that form the foundation of ethical and moral behavior. If we want good people who possess character, then we have to be concerned with more than just right behaviors. Just as the development of good thinkers goes beyond producing correct answers, the development of good people goes beyond producing appropriate behaviors.

Discipline systems that are based on a model of obedience and compliance are ordinarily fueled by a combination of rewards and punishments, which merely teach students to be responsive to the most persuasive voice. Today, of course, the most persuasive voices which students often attend to are not the voice of well-intentioned adults, but instead the voices of drug and gun dealers, overly materialistic sexually-exploitive media, and anti-social peers.

Models of discipline that center on obedience tend to create at best a "don't get caught" attitude and a lack of personal and social responsibility among students. At their worst, they inspire feelings of resentment, resistance, defiance, anger, and rebellion, which result in power struggles between students and adults, and in too many instances, the escalation of minor misconduct to disruption, aggression, and violence.

Obedience models of discipline also rob students of their intrinsic motivation for learning and cultivation of pro-social behavior by contributing to learned helplessness and school and classroom climates dominated by overt and covert threats and fear. These characteristics are antithetical to what is known regarding the optimal conditions for learning and the prevention of challenging behaviors. Such systems of discipline are, therefore, in direct opposition to the efforts educators make to help students become critical thinkers.

For these reasons, we might do well to view "disciplined" as a noun or adjective rather than a verb. Viewing the word "disciplined" as a set of skills and values that are to be learned rather than a set of behaviors we train people to do might enable us to create schools that surpass mere control, compliance, and order. In these schools students would have ample opportunity to influence and make decisions concerning school and classroom rules, demonstrate initiative and leadership, and engage in appropriate risk-taking. In these schools students would be able to make choices regarding what they learn, how they learn, where they learn, with whom they learn, and about the criteria and methods used to assess and evaluate their progress. In these schools only angry, hardened, antisocial students would be subjected to an obedience model of discipline. Yet, even for these students, such a model would not represent the last stop on the discipline train. In these schools self-discipline, responsibility, and community would be the ultimate destination for all students.

Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.

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