Punishments and Rewards
Even after a situation has been as carefully organized as is humanly possible, there are sure to come social emergencies. These furnish occasions for a type of discipline which is valuable not so much for the effect which it produces on the present situation as for its effect on the future. Furthermore, there is often very little expectation that the future will bring an exact repetition of the particular situation which has just passed. The discipline is therefore general in its type rather than specifically applicable to the present.
Viewed as a general preparation for the future, the social condemnation or approval of an act is often very important. For example, a boy breaks something through sheer carelessness. Shall the teacher pass the act without comment, or shall the act be made an occasion for punishment? Some people are disposed to determine what kind of treatment shall be given in terms of the value of the object broken. This is evidently to make of the specific act a specific issue. It is better, if it can be done, to detach attention from the specific act and note the general consequences of carelessness. Educationally, the accident furnishes an opportunity to warn, not against breaking that particular object again, but against being careless. If the lesson is well taught, it will tend to keep the boy from rushing about in the future without regard for his surroundings, whatever those surroundings may be.
Commendation, like blame, is useless except as it sets up in the pupil’s mind true canons of judgment. To praise a child for a particular act, merely concentrating attention on that act, is to neglect the opportunity of cultivating a general virtue.
So complicated are the issues touched on in the last few paragraphs that many teachers feel that the safest course is to avoid praise and blame as far as possible and allow natural consequences to open the eyes of children to the virtue or error of their ways. Social approbation and social condemnation are thought of as something highly artificial and to be avoided. Experience does not justify this view. Social life has its rewards and its punishments, and the child will miss a large part of his education if he does not come to understand the importance to him of social values.
Let us consider a concrete case. A group of small boys in the fourth grade hid the rubbers and umbrella of a little girl in their grade one rainy noon, so that the girl was much delayed in starting home for luncheon and was much distressed. What could be done? The range of ordinary school punishments seems very limited. In earlier days there was a form of punishment capable of the nicest gradations and of universal application for every offense. But corporal punishment has gone, and if, from among the remaining possibilities, properly adjusted punishment is to be administered, it must be devised with ingenuity and regulated in quantity. The teacher in the case referred to hit on the plan of making the three little boys serve the girl for a week. They brought her coat and hat to her after school. She sent them on errands to the library. They learned more under the careful observation of the class about how boys should treat others, especially girls, than they could possibly have thought out in long months of freedom from the bonds of service.
Legitimate praise is perhaps harder to administer with equity than punishment. The teacher holds up a child’s drawing and calls attention to its excellences. The danger is that the child will become self-conscious and conceited. A boy is polite and the teacher remarks on the fact. The other boys in the class who have not of late merited such praise make a virtue of their freedom from the taint of the teacher’s praise.
The difficulty of laying down any principles regulating punishment and praise is that cases cannot be discussed intelligently without reference to the general social situations in which they find their setting. It may be said, indeed, that when an act is performed, it is too late to deal with it adequately in any case. The only effective form of classroom management is that which anticipates the act and develops a social atmosphere in which condemnation or approbation is naturally and spontaneously contributed by the whole group.
It is sometimes said that good school discipline is to be found only where there is no discipline. This remark is true only when discipline is thought of as synonymous with punishment administered; it assumes that the administration of such punishment is the chief or only form of discipline. In a larger view of the situation one should recognize that the best school discipline is that which guides the social group at all times and controls its attitudes toward all acts. The spirit of a class is no accident of the moment. That teacher has the best discipline who has planned and prepared the social situation so carefully that a departure from the established order brings an instant and wholesome response from the whole group.