Some balk at the word discipline, equating it with abuse. Mirriam-Webster.com defines discipline as means to “punish or penalize for the sake of enforcing obedience and perfecting moral character.” Respectfully, Mirriam-Webster, I disagree. Discipline is not a punishment or a penalty. It is a powerfully positive and helpful tool for learning.
“Wow, you’ve come a long way,” we praise someone who’s lost weight. “You have so much discipline.” This positive use of the word connotes extraordinary self-mastery, also known as self-discipline.
While directing a specific learning path is challenging, it is definitely not a punishment. The word discipline has roots in Latin. Discipulus is the word for “students” (And by the way, the C in the middle of the word makes sound so it’s pronounced disk-i-pulus. Thanks, Duo Lingo.) In the Bible, the followers of Christ were his disciples: his students.
When my son started Tae Kwon Do, his instructor said, “This ia a structured discipline in martial arts.” The phrase struck me. If a disciple is a student, then a discipline is a path of study. If parents viewed disciplining their kids as a teaching tool rather than a punishment, perhaps they would approach it differently.
Perhaps classrooms could view discipline differently as well. Across the world, students sit in classrooms, either engaged in study or detached and bored, or worse, acting out. A teacher’s quest is to engage their discipulus in the delicate discipline of learning. But until a student owns their discipline, they won’t learn. Is this a reasonable thing to ask of a child? Yes! In 1982, a professor or Science and Mathematics
Elementary Education at Hofstra University at the time observed a kindergarten class engaged in learning.
“If this young student’s mind is repeatedly stimulated [this way], she will be able to learn whatever she chooses. We will have taught her how to learn.”
Lazer Goldberg
Their only instruction was to build a tall tower out of clay, but once the towers reached a certain height, they fell. After some thought, one girl began to build her tower in a spiral. It grew taller. She tunneled a cave in the base to source more clay. Other children collaborated and followed her instruction. Soon many had tall, structurally sound towers.
“The girl knew nothing about stress, compression, and tension,” Goldberg stated in his summary article Learning How to Learn, “If this young student’s mind is repeatedly stimulated [this way], she will be able to learn whatever she chooses. We will have taught her how to learn.” The girl learned a process of discipline through thinking, experimenting, questioning, making mistakes, and trying again. At a Campaign For Learning Forum in 2002, Professor Phil Adey described the “main pillar” of learning as “cognitive
conflict,” or the discipline to think through challenges and solutions.
Children who are challenged to think, to speak, and listen with others, and to try multiple solutions are disciplined. Goldberg concluded that “actively striving to find answers through interesting and significant investigations can engaged the whole child, not just a part of his or her mind.”
The delicate art of discipline leads to success and is worth pursuing at any age. Children especially need discipline
to be modeled and taught as they develop and test their perceptions of the world. Doing so promotes the ultimate self discipline: the path to self discovery.
Erin Grant is a Senior at BYU-Idaho, majoring in English. When she’s not writing, she likes to spend time with her husband and six kids or talk to the plants in her garden. She aspires to teach writing and/or publish her work someday.
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