The Province of Discipline
Discipline is that vital control of an individual that molds character. All those agencies that are employed to perfect and round out character are disciplinary devices.
“The daily discipline of a good school is a constant instruction in morals. The idea of order that is suggested in the appearance of the school is here perceived in action. There is a regulated system into which the individual must enter. He must subordinate his own desires and impulses to the general social welfare. Thus he learns the elementary virtue of obedience. He takes orders and obeys them. He becomes accustomed to an authority which he must respect.”[[9]]
Were every product of the school-room a perfectly disciplined product, the pupil would be self-controlling and the prophecy that perfect discipline would annihilate prisons, reforms and courts of justice would become a fact. A human being self-controlled after experience under a sound system of discipline would offer little difficulty as a subject of school management. Since discipline is a training in self-control and self-direction, which are prime elements in character, discipline is indispensable in character building.
Training in self-mastery is impossible without a prearranged determination of conduct. Some one must analyze the possible types of activity and wisely direct the immature person in choosing his standards of conduct.
[9]. Sneath and Hodges, op. cit., pp. 194-5.