Many types of maladjusted children are found in our school classroom. Teachers consider the keeping of discipline to be their number one professional problem. More teachers probably fail in their work because of inability to maintain a well-ordered classroom than for any other single reason. Although the importance and need for providing a classroom atmosphere that is conductive for effective learning has never been doubted, methods of keeping discipline have changed radically over the years. Formerly, it was considered standard practice to bring an offender into line by corporal punishment, ridicule, or the removal of privileges. Discipline was something imposed upon the child by the teacher.
The modern conception of discipline is that it is both regulative and educative where the attention of the administrator or the teacher is directed to constructive attitudes and habits if conduct, rather than to regulations of control negative in nature. The modern concept is regulative because without quiet and order, effective teaching on one hand, and profitable learning on the other, are not possible. The true function of classroom discipline is to create a desire to help establish and maintain good working conditions to further the accomplishment of the objectives for which the teacher and the pupils are working.
Likewise, classroom discipline is educative. According to Mueller, the purpose of discipline is to help the individual to acquire knowledge, power, habits, interests, and ideas which are designed for the well-being of himself and his fellows that discipline is a matter of education. Classroom discipline aims to bring about desirable behavior on the part of all pupils.
Besides being regulative and educative, the modern concept of discipline is also based on the rational approach. In a rational approach to discipline, mere compliance is subordinate to understanding. The pupils must be made to understand why certain modes of behavior are to be followed, to question the reasonableness of things, to have the habits of finding out about things, and to make up their own minds. The administrator or the teacher must see to it that discipline of the home and the school should recognize the dignity of each individual and right to seek recognition and to direct his own activities. Modern discipline must be viewed insight and understanding.
By: Alfredo E. De Leon | Principal IV | Lamao Elementary School | Lamao, Bataan
