A second look at discipline

Many would argue that freedom given to children leads to anarchy. Is this true? Our society, raised under the strictest discipline code which continues to be adopted in regular schools, today exhibits a frightening degree of anarchy. Obviously, it is not freedom which is responsible for this, but the natural outcome when discipline is enforced extremely. Teachers must have the courage to change their attitude. How many of them are committed and bold enough to do this, asks SITA NAYAR.

THERE is tremendous restlessness among children today. The stampede and the uproar which usually characterise dismissal time in schools and the silence the moment the teacher approaches the classroom, points to the futility of an externally enforced discipline which disappears the moment the teacher leaves the room and the need for accountability is gone. Aggressive, rebellious, self-destructive behaviour, bullying and so on, are all indicative of this state of unrest. These are problems which worry most school authorities. The child's home background is usually considered to be the sole contributory factor for all these problems. However, the role schools play in creating, sustaining and reinforcing these attitudes and behaviours often goes unnoticed.

The fact is that in many schools, children feel frustrated - they feel thoroughly disrespected, neglected, misunderstood and have no control over their own lives. Could this possibly be a cause for the unrest? Is it possible that children feel rushed and burdened by an over-loaded curriculum having to memorise mountains of material, yet comprehending and finding use for so little of it? Could it be that they feel frustrated at having to participate in inane activities which, to them, serve no practical end, while not having the freedom to do those things which allow them to indulge their curiosity, to explore, investigate and learn meaningfully? Could the unrest possibly have something to do with the consequent feeling of futility and boredom felt by each and every child, the sense of utter hopelessness at being trapped in a decadent educational system which they are helpless to change?

Unhappy and neglected children often become discipline problems. Although the teacher's eye is constantly on them, their real needs are most often neglected. As discipline problems increase, school and college administrators seek harsh, punitive measures to curb them. Research shows that punitive measures only aggravate an already difficult situation, increasing the restlessness, the inner rage and rebelliousness, still further. This in turn calls for still harsher forms of punishment and so the vicious circle continues. Children finally appear to behave because of the ever-present threat of punishment and everyone is relieved for the moment.

Early childhood is the most significant time of a person's life. This is when children are most in need of empathy, as they struggle hard to cope with a world ruled by adult laws which pay little attention to their natural needs. Instead, they are made to sit for hours each day in what is, probably, the most fearful environment they will ever have to encounter in their lives, the average pre-school classroom. When every part of their being is crying out for freedom to just be, they are forced to sit in silence for hours in the prison house called classroom. Is it any wonder that these children go wild the moment they are let out?

Discipline, as it is generally understood in regular schools, is:

* (a) blind obedience to adult authority

* (b) never criticising or questioning adult follies

In other words, a child is considered disciplined only if he is able to fulfill the needs of the adults who control his life, in particular, their need to feel powerful and to control. But children were not created for the purpose of fulfilling adult whims. They were born with lives of their own to lead. When they are continually thwarted in this endeavour, as they often are, they feel frustrated and, naturally, make an attempt to preserve this basic human right to self-expression. Adults may not judge a child as "good" or "bad" when he thus attempts to assert himself. If the situation is seen from the child's viewpoint the need for judgment simply disappears. When necessary, the negative effects of his action may be discussed with him, with the child being given a fair hearing. Condemning labels such as "wicked", "naughty", "stubborn", used often enough on a child, eventually make him just so (a self-fulfilling prophesy) - thus worsening an already unhappy situation. Most importantly, no child may be called "indisciplined" simply because he refuses to be bullied by adults - because he has a thinking mind and insists on choosing his own actions. It sometimes takes only minutes for a grown-up to completely shatter the confidence of a child, with just one insensitive word, but it takes forever to restore that lost confidence to the child because he is likely to carry the negative self-image with him, for the rest of his life. This can, in turn, have a negative impact on his day-to-day interactions with other people and on the success of all his undertakings.

Children who are respected and have the freedom to take charge of their own lives learn to value time, to order their priorities intelligently, to make choices, to respect and accept others - they gradually learn to adjust quite naturally. Because they are treated with respect and never "caged" in their classrooms, they never feel a need to rebel - there is nothing to rebel against. They never need to shout because they are listened to attentively whenever they speak. In an atmosphere where children exercise their freedom to grow and learn, there is a natural establishment of an inner order, which constitutes self-discipline.

In contrast, in a typical adult-controlled environment, the child is trapped in a state of emotional immaturity. With the teacher initiating and directing his every activity, he becomes a passive learner, steeped in mental and physical lethargy. He is learning that time has no value and as long as the teacher commands it, it is perfectly all right to waste (precious) time, e.g., sitting with head on the desk for 15-20 minutes, writing something repeatedly as a means to learning it. The list of time-wasting activities in the regular school set-up is endless. Could teacher imagination not be put to better use to develop intelligent, meaningful and enjoyable learning programmes?

Intelligent, thinking children are just bored with and frustrated by a system which thwarts the development of their creative intelligence. They are bored with having to sit captive behind their desks for hours copying down questions and answers from the blackboard or their textbooks (which they will later memorise for their tests). They are bored with having to write the same word over and over again as a means to learning its spelling. They are bored with having to do work which is no challenge to their searching minds. Why are children being taught that learning must be a pain in order to be of value? Bored, frustrated and angry children invariably become discipline problems. The fault is not theirs. Every one of us must have a personal reason for doing what we do. Otherwise we cannot do it well. It is no different with children. When learning is intrinsically motivated, it becomes meaningful and, thus, complete. Children are, by nature, very curious and they have an innate desire to do things independently, to learn and achieve competence.

In the early years, a child's metabolism is naturally very active. His body thrives on physical activity - his blood circulation is improved (thus improving the flow of blood to his brain, making him more clear-headed and receptive to all stimuli around him), his appetite is improved and he grows healthier, physically. Children, therefore, by their very nature are not designed to sit in one place for long hours at a stretch. The growth of intelligence depends on the freedom children have in the early years, to physically interact with their environment. Free play provides the opportunity for this much-needed interaction. Joseph Chilton Pearce says, "Play serves survival". Piaget tells us that every vital ingredient required for "structuring a world view can be provided by play". There is a great deal of awareness building up, much work being done beneath the surface when children are engaged in free play. Being forced to sit behind desks for a long time cramps their muscles and gradually increases their restlessness and frustration until they are ready to burst. When they do burst, finally, we label them "indisciplined". Children might become restless and fidgety, bite their nails, get easily distracted, distract others, develop learning difficulties, become generally indifferent, or even be aggressive - often as a result of being forced into this very unnatural state. Experts coin a new name every day and we now have an endless number of learning disorders in addition to the behavioral disorders, which specialists are later called upon to fix. Many of these problems would disappear if we changed our perception of children, as also our approach to education to make it meaningful and humane.

Most regular schools have one 45-minute period a week for outdoor activity which is often wasted away in an ancient ritual called P.T.. An eight-year old boy recently explained his aversion to P.T., "P.T. Sir has a long metal ruler," he said, "and he whacks you hard on the back of your legs. When your legs hurt and you change your position, Sir hits you hard and tells you to stand properly ..." In another school of repute, a child was made to run thrice around the large school ground. His crime? He had black shoes on a day when he should have worn white canvas shoes. Sounds like stories from Auschwitz/Nuremberg. How long can you make children stand in the hot sun in the name of discipline without bringing out the worst rage in them? In what way is forgetting to wear black shoes instead of white, going to destroy the boy's character or discipline for life? What a lot of time was wasted in this punishment. What a powerful lesson in intolerance and unreasonableness would the child have learned from this experience? Surely, no one will claim that this kind of brutality inculcates discipline. Violence only breeds more violence. It is a pity that educated parents permit schools to adopt such barbaric practices in the name of discipline. If the intention of the P.T. teacher is to help children by giving them an opportunity to stretch their muscles and relax, then let him give the children at least a one-hour freeplay period every day so that it may have some real value.

In the early years, children are just discovering language and are eager to express in words all that they observe and experience. Now, teachers demand silence, thus effectively curbing a basic natural need for verbal self-expression. Is it any wonder that they shout and scream when teacher is out of sight? Is it any wonder that language is so poorly developed in most children? At a time when the potential for language development is maximum (the first five years of life), children are told to be silent. No talking is permitted during the long hours spent in the learning environment called classroom. How, then, can ideas be exchanged, and language learned? How then can intelligence grow, considering that active interaction with the environment is a key contributory factor in the development of human intelligence?

In an average day in a child's life there are many reasons for frustration. The discipline problems we see are the direct spill- over of this frustration. No one can tolerate being bound in chains - much less, children. The chains might be invisible, but they are there, nonetheless. The rebelling/disruptive child is telling us. "we have reached the limit. We cannot take it anymore". Punishment, though it does provide an outlet for the teacher's irritation, only humiliates the child and further aggravates his behaviour problem. The "bad" child stays bad because the people who matter to him, see him that way.

"Children learn what they like" - (Dorothy Law Nolte). Many would argue that freedom given to children leads to anarchy. But, our society which has experienced little freedom, and has largely been raised under the strictest discipline code which continues to be adopted in regular schools today, exhibits a frightening degree of anarchy. Obviously then, it is not freedom which has caused the anarchy. It is the natural outcome when discipline is enforced extremely. Such discipline has no real, lasting value. Self-discipline, on the other hand, is possible only in a culture which treats its children with respect and accepts them unconditionally. Schools were created to help the child. Hence they should be child-centred. In an environment which is empathic towards children's natural needs, discipline problems simply do not exist. When children are accepted unconditionally, it means that they have been accepted with all their "imperfections". In such an environment, no child feels a need to rebel against his teachers or his parents because they have accepted him as he is. He does not have to do the impossible by trying to live up to their arbitrary and unrealistic expectations of him. He can, instead, go about his business of actually discovering and exploring his interests, experiencing and learning from life. Self-discipline sets one up for a lifetime of effective living, as opposed to extremely enforced discipline which exists only as long as there is a need for accountability. No adult may even consider moulding children against their nature into some arbitrary notion he might have about the perfect human being because this, in fact, is what leads to many of the discipline problems which exist today. And having created them we expend new energy seeking solutions in the form of punishment which only further intensify the problem. Surely, this has got to stop. We need to rethink our perception of children. We need to allow them, to grow in accordance with their true nature - where we might provide support when needed, not crutches, understanding and empathy, not praise which, invariably leads to approval- dependent behaviour, unconditional acceptance, not judgment and condemnation ... Perhaps, we shall first need to work at improving our own level of emotional security before we can do justice by our children and not feel threatened by their behaviour.

A general misconception is that when one has classes of 30-40 children each, such freedom is impossible to even consider. With very young children, it is true that a smaller child-teacher ratio would be ideal. However, with some time and effort put into observation of children, careful planning and preparation of learning/activity centres, the monotony of regular classes can be broken despite the numbers - and learning can be made more personal and meaningful. But teachers must, for the sake of children, have the courage to break away from the security of the rut in which they have all become very comfortable, and be prepared to undergo some basic attitudinal changes. It will, of course, mean making some mistakes along the way but are not the most valuable and permanent lessons learned from mistakes? It would certainly set us off on the road to equipping children with the self-discipline which is required to solve life's problems effectively. But how many teachers are committed and bold enough to do this?

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