Regarding Discipline

Regarding Discipline: The etymology of the word focuses on the process by which we impart skills and ideas rather than on the skills and ideas themselves. Doctrine and Scholarship deal with the skills and ideas in the abstract. So discipline, rightly understood, is what we deal with more than anything else in the K-12 world. We are teachers, not scholars, and we teach kids, not subjects. Process, at this age, is as important as content. They’re not flawed little adults; they’re kids.

Kids have a measure of discipline. They have disciplined themselves in at least a few things. It has worked for them. Rewards and discipline -- carrot and stick. What would we replace these with?

We are constantly given to straying from healthier paths unless we have the self-discipline to stay true. Kids have less self-discipline. And they are bombarded by messages telling them to just f**k it, that only idiots work hard for . . . anything.

And yet, they know that they need to learn stuff and generally they do want to learn stuff. . . . just not necessarily at the same moment we want to teach it or in the place its being taught or in the proven manner in which it might be taught.

Sometimes kids say to me, “I’m not inspired, Greg! It’s hard to work when I’m not inspired!” And I know that, ideally, I’d like to be able to inspire every kid all the time. But inspiration doesn’t come easily and when it does come, it usually doesn’t come to a bunch of people at the same time. And those to whom it doesn’t come will regard their suddenly inspired peers as a little off balance and in need of being brought back down to the real doldrums of what we’re enduring. Inspiration is scandalous.



Inspiration is rare. If we all waited for inspiration, nothing would get done. If Picasso or Woolf or Ellington or Cassatt waited for inspiration every day, they wouldn’t have done a tenth of the work they did. A painter paints, an accountant accounts, a teacher teaches, a composer composes, and a student studies. And it’s discipline -- imposed from within and without -- that motivates them all. To the extent that a necessary discipline has not been developed within, and that’s the case with kids generally, it has to be provided. And, of course, kids will sometimes think that they have the discipline others find missing.