Wordsmithing #1NKCSDHDC-Rob212010-05-24T02:23:00Z2010-05-24T02:23:00Z5193111009NKCSD91251291512Wordsmithing #7By Rob BohningDiscipline & DiscipleEducators seem to be developing a problem with the term discipline. Individuals in general do not want to be disciplined. The youth pick up on this attitude and learn to reject discipline. The very thought of another person disciplining us seems to interfere with out notion of freedom. It seems that because of social and psychological fields of studies, we are dissuaded as teachers from doing that which we are called to do.Consider the following sentences taken from the Oxford collocations dictionaries:“We need better discipline in our schools.” This sentence exemplifies the first connotation of this word: CONTROLLING BEHAVIOR. When we discipline, we control the behavior of others through some means.“The party exercises discipline over its members.” Again, this is an issue of CONTROLLING BEHAVIOR.“It takes great discipline to learn a musical instrument.” In this sentence, we have the idea that a person is responsible for CONTROLLING HIM/HERSELF.“They established psychology as an academic discipline.” In this connotation, “discipline” refers to a SUBJECT OF STUDY.The idea of discipline historically speaking is derived from the student/teacher relationship. In Latin, the term “discipulus,” is the term used to describe a scholar. In Greek, the term “mathetes” is the term used to describe a learner, which is primarily translated as disciple. In the first century Greek, Roman and Jewish cultures, a teacher’s primary job in teaching the students was to live with them and teach them all that was needed or known. Very few were able to afford to be disciples, so there were not very many disciples. The purpose of being a disciple was to become like the teacher. The teacher’s job was to model how to live as well as to give their disciples the necessary information needed to be whatever it was that he was. However, in that day, information was somewhat more finite, as opposed to the information that we have today. Yet, their abilities to reason were far superior to what we teach in modern times. The Greeks are credited with all of our different philosophies of logic and reason. The Jews, on the other hand, were required to memorize their entire Scriptures. It was common for them to have memorized their first five books of the Bible by the age of 13. These Scriptures can be seen often in the US laws and codes, from the notion of having witnesses in fair trials, to property rights, to the idea that murder is wrong; all these ideas are derived from Jewish culture.With this as the background of the term “disciple” meaning a “learner,” which we can today call “student,” let us consider the modern term, “discipline plan.” Every school is required to have a discipline plan in order to properly instruct students. What does this term really mean? What does it imply? What should it imply? What should it NOT imply?First, the reason a discipline plan exists was not originally to justify legal requirements that our governments have made. But, because teachers are not viewed as trustworthy agents of instruction in our culture, they must be protected by some form of legally acceptable discipline plan. In this way, a teacher can know the boundaries of what they should not do in a classroom. There is no such thing as common sense when it comes to protecting children from those rogue teachers who go outside the discipline plan. This is good when it protects students from being physically abused, but it is just silly when it is used as leverage by administrations to micromanage their staff. Thus, the first WRONG approach to creating a discipline plan is to view it as some sort of legally binding protection against being sued. This seems to be our sad situation in this present era.Second, since the term discipline should refer to the student/teacher relationship, discipline should be relationally connected to the modern term, “curriculum.” A curriculum is the subject matter (or the academic disciplines) that every student is expected to learn. A discipline plan should outline how each teacher is going to instruct their students. The curriculum is the “what,” and the discipline is the “how.”This seems to be in contrast to what discipline plans seem to be about today. For example, some discipline plans are based upon contrived language that a teacher is supposed to use, and about some type of layered consequence system that occurs when students go outside of what they are supposed to be doing in the classroom. The discipline plan does not answer the question, “How does a teacher instruct in the subject of _______.” This type of discipline plan is not connected to the curriculum. These types of plans tend to originate from places that help juvenile delinquents who are physically/mentally/emotionally abused people. Their purposes are to deal with people who cannot behave in culturally appropriate situations. Why in the world, then, do educators look to specialized home to modify behavior of the average student? Have we begun to assume that the general populations of students are abused delinquents? When did we become so pessimistic? Furthermore, how do these types of plans answer the question of “how” to teach the academic curriculum?Other types of discipline plans focus on behavior modification. Their belief is that rewarding positive behaviors of the majority will put peer pressure on the misbehaving minority. They do not use contrived language or layered consequences. The problem is that there are not agreed upon values. Plus, the meanings of the words used to describe these values often have widely varying connotations, to the point that students do not really understand the meanings of certain values. For example, what exactly is “positive behavior”? Is walking in a straight line really a positive behavior that students will need for adulthood? Is a loud lunchroom really the ultimate in student disrespect to adults? Is playing too rough at recess really the indicator of a future violent student? So, then, if a student doesn’t pick their nose all day in class, then the whole class can earn themselves an extra recess. Can any of this help us in some way to explain to anyone exactly HOW a student is going to learn the curriculum that we have laid out not only for us, but for them as well?In the book PRINCIPLES OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT: A HEIRARCHICAL APPROACH by James Levin and James F. Nolan, they discuss 5 different teacher power bases identified from research done in the 60s by French and Raven (pgs. 83-89). They are:Referent PowerExpert PowerLegitimate Power4/5. Reward/Coercive PowerReferent power is earned by the teacher when they take a personal interest in a student. The student begins to trust the teacher, and eventually even likes the teacher. The student then behaves based upon the positive relationship that the teacher and student has. (This is the concept behind the Greek “mathetes,” or disciple. The student is learning from the teacher based upon a personal relationship to the teacher.)Expert power is earned by the teacher by virtue of his or her expertise in a certain area. When students perceive that the teacher has a special knowledge that can benefit him or her and they value what they are learning, then students behave because they have a desire to learn. (This too is also in line with the idea that the Greek term for disciple is simply the word for “a learner.”)Legitimate power is earned by the teacher when the teacher establishes that he or she has the legal and formal authority to be their teacher. This assumes that students have a positive or reverent understanding of the concept of “a teacher.” This power base cannot work if the teacher uses a more informal approach to teaching. This kind of power base might be termed as “old school.” Yet, when a teacher behaves in such a way as to expect respect, then the teacher can create a workable classroom environment. There can be no compromise in this approach. Reward/Coercive power is earned by teachers when they either punish students for misbehavior or provide a variety of rewards for appropriate behavior. The authors list three requirements for this power base to be successful: 1) the teacher must be consistent in assigning and withholding rewards/punishments, 2) the teacher must make sure the student sees the connection between the reward/punishment and their behavior, 3) the rewards/punishments must be perceived to be rewards or punishments by the students. (This type of power base has left the etymological meaning of discipline, and has connotated something else that is not discipline. It can be effective to modify behavior, but it does not answer the primary question of HOW to teach something.)In conclusion, it is necessary to review the proper role of a teacher. If a teacher is to earn the respect of being a teacher from their students, if she is to have some good disciples in her class, the teacher role must be spelled out:We are teachers first and foremost. We are not parents. Their job is to love their children, protect their children from harm, feed them, clothe them, shelter them, etc. It seems true that parents may not be doing their job. If that is really true, that parents are neglecting their children, then our job would be to hotline those parents. But what does that do? They are taken away from their mom and dad? To do what? To be put into a broken social system like DFS? While this is sad, we are teachers, not parents. In a free country like the United States, there have always been people who value “anti-intellectualism.” We are their enemies as teachers, and are treated as such by those who believe in this value. But, we must respect their rights. It is not OK for us to violate the freedom and dignity of another human being to impose our values and morals of education on the generationally-impoverished who choose to do nothing about their children’s education. I am glad I’ve seen this rarely, but in principle, we do not need to rehabilitate parents; it is not our primary job. While poverty is a sad side effect of capitalism, I do not think socialism and communism have provided great results either. If we can motivate a child to be our disciple, then we have changed a universe; but when we cannot motivate, our conscience is clear if we have fulfilled our role.We are teachers first and foremost. We are not sociologists or psychologists. Our job is to disciple students to learn what it is that we have developed in our curriculum. We really should not try to analyze the causes and effects of their family life. It may help us understand poor performance, but it does not justify it. Any student can perform, and any sociological or psychological factor only challenges our methods and procedures of HOW to instruct students in the curriculum that we are hired to teach. Blaming poverty, emotional problems, family life, and the like as reasons a student cannot learn, then we are only making excuses and not fulfilling our role.We are teachers first and foremost. We are not principals or administrators. Schedules, meetings, planning, etc. are the jobs of these people. I do not know how it has been allowed to become rolled up into a teachers’ duty also. For every meeting, committee, responsibility, or duty that distracts teachers from disciplining their students, that takes teachers’ time away from teaching. This should not be. If the task allows teachers to be with students in non-instructional ways, this can be OK, but as a teacher, there are NO such times where they are NOT teaching. Teachers can teach whenever and wherever.We are teachers first and foremost. We are not proctors for political purposes. The exams that we give should measure the curriculum that we taught. Why should our students take tests that do not measure what we did not teach them? There is no amount of data that tell a teacher how well a student reads better than the teacher who knows her; no data can show how much a student has grown; no data can show maturity; no data can show true wisdom or insight. Data can show us numbers, which we only use to justify someone’s political agenda. It does not belong in school at all. Let adults take the tests that paid proctors can give. Let the teachers teach.Finally, we as teachers need to understand what it means to have discipline, or to give discipline. A teacher should be the leader of a few disciples. A teacher decides WHAT to teach, and then makes a plan for HOW to teach. Making up discipline plans, figuring out reward systems, making consequence charts or figuring out other ways to control student behavior take us away from this role of teacher. What does it really mean to discipline? It means to make a disciple, to make good students.