Summary
1. Discipline is defined as a training to act in accordance with established moral principles.
2. If true discipline could obtain, most school-room problems would cease to exist and there would be no need of courts of justice and penal institutions.
3. The end of discipline is self-control on the part of the child.
4. Discipline is necessary for the production of worthy character.
5. A clear understanding of the end to be attained in discipline will decide the nature of the methods to be employed.
6. The teacher is the agent who must embody the ideal of self-control and thereby make perfect discipline possible.
7. It is impossible to secure any results in discipline unless its ideal is first embodied in the teacher’s life.
8. The teacher’s ideal must be lived out in his own life unconsciously. There can be no successful attempt on the part of the teacher to live in accordance with an artificial ideal.
9. The teacher’s influence over the child helps or hinders the growth of good character.
10. Pupils instinctively copy the teacher’s ideal.
11. Discipline is the teacher’s greatest function.
PART FOUR
Fundamental Principles in Discipline
Before entering into the discussion of the fundamental principles underlying discipline, it will be well to explode the erroneous notion that too many teachers hold: namely, that general principles of discipline are not broadly applicable. To illustrate, recently a certain magazine made the announcement that a notable educator was writing a course in child training. To this, one of those all-wise pessimists replied that the educator would have to write just as many courses as there were children, assuming that each child is a totally different entity and what can be used in the training of one child cannot possibly be employed in the education of another. Such an assumption is unsound, unfounded and absurd. In the following pages the writer proposes to prove the fallacy of such a notion.