Faculty Reflections: Discipline by Jacob Gieselman

Once again you are face-to-face with a recalcitrant child. I am sure this has never happened to you, but if it has, you may know the combination of emotions, impulses, justifications, and other considerations that are all mingling in your mind and body at that moment. The child, whether yours or not, has defied your authority blatantly, maybe with some heated words, and is refusing to comply with a wish that is clearly for their good and the good of others. What do you do? Well, a lot of what you do depends on what you are trying to do.

One thing is certain: that child cannot be allowed to do whatever they want totally unchecked. They require discipline. This has become a bit of a scary word to many people in these uncertain times, but it was not intended to be so; on the contrary, discipline is meant to be a comfort. The word “discipline” itself comes from the Latin word discipulus, which means “student.” A disciple is, of course, a student or follower of a certain path or calling, also called a discipline. The idea behind discipline is one of teaching towards a certain end. The end, or intended goal, really matters in discipline because the discipline must have an aim, a thing to be learned, or else it is just needless bossiness.

So, what do you want them to be a student of? What Way do you want them to follow? There are a whole host of different, novel ideas out there regarding which way to help, guide, force, lead, or send your child. One less novel idea that has endured for years beyond measure is that a student should be taught (or disciplined) towards the end of self-government. They will not be children forever, but we are caught in a bit of a catch-22: they need to learn habits now that will help them to govern themselves, but those habits require them to be governed now in order to learn them. That is where the teacher steps in. That is me. It is also you, if you are a parent, or sibling, or spouse, or member of the community. One thing that children need from adults is external government so that they can learn the skills and habits that prepare them for self-government when they are adults themselves. Our goal is for them to graduate from being a child and take their place alongside us as respectable members of the community. In fact, that has been the goal of the “liberal arts” for as long as they have existed.

The phrase “liberal arts” is often denigrated today, but it has a tradition longer than our country. The liberal arts are the studies and courses befitting a free person. If a man or woman was to take their place in society, there were basic skills and habits and bits of knowledge that they would need to have beforehand, and a liberal education provided that. It was directly aimed at raising up young people to be self-governed, and this is still the aim today. Another component that was not explicit, but certainly implicit, was the idea of virtue education. If a man is to govern, even himself, he must not be a tyrant; therefore, he must be a good man before he can rule. There is a Latin proverb attributed to Seneca: “none may command who has not first served,” and so an education in service and obedience was believed to be a prerequisite to good leadership, even if the only person I lead is myself. Discipline towards the end of self-government requires virtue, obedience, humility, and service. 

Teaching these things to students not only helps them form the habits of good citizens, it also frees them from themselves. When kids are little, they are… well… somewhat uncivilized to say the least, but downright tyrannical may be closer to the truth. They are slaves to their own passions, and they often demand that others around them be their slaves, too. Augustine, in reflecting on his own childhood in his Confessions, muses that children are each tyrants: “[w]as it a good thing for me to try, by struggling as hard as I could, to harm them for not obeying me, even when it would have done me harm to have been obeyed?” he asks, because he sees that his will did not have his good as its aim, but his immediate pleasure. A soul led by pleasure is a soul led by vice, and we find that, if we are not self-governed, we will be overmastered by our passions and appetites. Augustine points out in a different text that, “[w]hen the will was conquered by the vice into which it had fallen, human nature began to lose its freedom” (On Man’s Perfection in Righteousness).

Nor is this idea unique to Augustine. Aristotle observes the same tendency around seven hundred years earlier in his Ethics. Discipline and virtue, he argues, make us far more free than any government or license could. License is our irresponsible use of some freedom, and people without virtue will use any amount of freedom poorly to satisfy appetites and become licentious. True freedom is more akin to the ability to actually execute the rational decisions of your will, and “[i]n such knowledge [prudence and virtue]... lie the natural determinants of his conduct, in such knowledge alone lies the condition of his freedom and his good” (Ethics). Without the right habits of body and of mind, we are helplessly tossed around on the currents of our emotions, desires, and passions; we are slaves, no less because our master is a part of the self.

Not only do some of the better thinkers of our history agree with eachother, they agree with experience. Billiam Montgomery Fiddlestick, a typical parent, is standing in the line at the store because he needed toilet paper, of course. That was all he needed, and somehow he forgot to grab it when they went shopping yesterday. As a result, he is here today, paying with his time. As he glances over, he sees a rack full of uninteresting tidbits - mints, gum, some sort of poisonous sour candy, and then - aha! A Snickers bar. He does like a good candy bar, he thinks. But he does not need one, nor does he actually want it all that much, since he just ate a good, hearty dinner. What’s this… half off? Because they dropped a box on it?!?! Please, boxes don’t affect the flavor at all, everybody knows that! Billiam is able to wrest himself away from the sight at last as a register is open. He does not need a candy bar, and he is happy with his decision, he thinks to himself … yes, he is very happy that he decided to go back and get the candy bar that was on sale, especially since it was such a good sale. Billiam settles into his car and finishes off the candy bar, oblivious to the fact that he left his toilet paper inside after paying for it. What’s worse, as he sits there, he makes his mind a slave to his passions when he begins to rationalize why it was such a good idea to do what he knew he did not need or want to do. Rather than being free to choose, his lack of discipline has left him compelled to obey a much less wise master. We sometimes find ourselves in this same situation, and often we cannot even follow through on simple decisions that we know are best; what is to say that we can be faithful in much if we can not even be faithful in little? Can a man who can not resist a candy bar truly consider himself free?

In this world there are many things that are black-and-white, and perhaps equally as many things that have various shades of gray in the middle. I think that freedom falls in the “black-and-white” category: either we are slaves or we are free. That may change from moment to moment, action to action, but we are one or the other: we cannot be both. Much of the time (or, from my own experience, perhaps most of the time) we are slaves to our passions. We obey them as a dog would obey a master to avoid a swat on the nose. It is not a just authority, nor is it a profitable one, but it is certainly a powerful one. Some of the time, we are ruled by our own decisions and will, and this is a much more appropriate situation. In order to have it this way, however, we must be disciplined; our body, soul, and will must be properly aligned, and we must not only know the right things but love them more than the wrong things. This is the moral component of our education. This is what really makes a person free.

Although the word “discipline” can be scary, and although it implies some sort of harsh treatment, this kind of discipline is still fairly open-ended. Should I use the rod or spare it? Should I raise my voice or lower it? Should I impose consequences or let the natural ones run their course? These are particulars, and so they may apply differently in particular circumstances. That is the art of parenting, and it takes many years to master, if it can be mastered. One thing, though, is sure: discipline is required for virtue, and virtue is required for freedom. John Locke summarizes the need for parental discipline well in his Thoughts Concerning Education:

Fear and Awe ought to give you the first Power over their Minds, and Love and Friendship in riper Years to hold it : For the Time must come, when they will be past the Rod and Correction : and then, if the Love of you make them not obedient and dutiful, if the Love of Virtue and Reputation keep them not in laudable Courses, I ask, what Hold will you have upon them to turn them to it? Indeed, Fear of having a scanty Portion if they displease you, may make them Slaves to your Estate, but they will be nevertheless ill and wicked in private ; and that Restraint will not last always. Every Man must some Time or other be trusted to himself and his own Conduct; and he that is a good, a virtuous, and able Man, must be made so within. And therefore what he is to receive from Education, what is to sway and influence his Life, must be something put into him betimes ; Habits woven into the very Principles of his Nature…