DISCIPLINE AND THE SOCIAL AIM OF EDUCATION

The ethical and social aims of education are accomplished in part by example, in part by precept, and in still larger part by practice. The inculcation of virtue by precept is far less effective than the inculcation of virtue by example, and the inculcation of virtue by example requires for its completion the habitual practice of that virtue by the pupil. This explains why, in elementary and high schools, so little attention is paid to formal instruction in morals and duties, and so much emphasis is properly laid upon the personality of the teacher and upon the actual behaviour and habits of the pupils.

The problem of discipline in the educational system of a democracy is the world-old problem of reconciling liberty with order, progress with permanence, and government with justice.

It is of the essence of democracy that every individual shall be called upon to do the best that is in him and to do this in such a manner as not to limit the similar right and equal opportunity of every other individual to do the same. Therefore, each individual’s share in collective action or the accomplishment of a collective purpose must be something he imposes upon himself and not something which is imposed upon him by force from without or by the authority of other wills than his own.

There can be no dispute as to the fact that society is composed of individuals, but there appears to be a wide difference of opinion as to the relation in which society should stand to the individuals who compose it. There are those who, confident of the wisdom of their own opinions and judgment, impatient of the slow sagacity of nature, and dissatisfied with the imperfect results of education, would extend the rule of compulsion over the conduct and habits of men from the necessary to the merely expedient and from the highly important to the trivial and insignificant. It is just now a common observation that whenever a majority, however fickle or however fortuitous, can be obtained in support of a given restriction upon others which commends itself to their own judgment or their own feelings, they will promptly impose that restriction upon all men within reach of their authority, quite regardless of its ultimate moral or social effects. This is the disposition which, for many centuries, has been responsible at one time or another for sumptuary legislation of various kinds and for the annoying and foolish restrictions that have from time to time been imposed upon men without any permanent result other than to make clear the unwisdom of the principles and policies which guide such action. This is the danger that is always present in those movements which, to those who are enthusiastic in their support and frequently high-minded, appear to make for moral and economic progress and prosperity, but which in reality have an opposite effect because they extend the area of compulsion over conduct.

Sound discipline takes its start from the capacity and the educability of the individual. Upon this, it makes the most rigorous and insistent demands. It aims to develop personality and self to the utmost, but it aims to develop it as selfhood and not as selfishness. The gap between selfhood and selfishness is as wide as the gap between sound and unsound individualism. Unsound individualism errs on its side as completely as does collectivism on the other side. The one means an eventual anarchy where the right is determined by the rule of might; the other means stagnation where the right is determined by tradition and custom. Between the two, sharing the advantages of individualism and of collectivism alike and avoiding the evils of both, lies that form of political and moral philosophy which, for lack of a better term, may be called institutionalism. This philosophy teaches that the individual finds his completion and satisfaction in willing membership in the social whole with all the obligations that such membership brings to human service and collective responsibility.

Autocracy and an all-powerful, non-moral state have demonstrated that they can obtain and manifest a marked degree of national efficiency. It remains for democracy to prove that it can do the same, or it will eventually succumb before a more effective type of national organization in which true civil liberty is unknown.

The difficulties of democracy are the opportunities of education. It is for the educational system of a really free people to train and discipline its children so that their contribution to the national organization and national effectiveness will be voluntary and generous, not prescribed and forced.

The service and the sacrifice, which are the results of a self-imposed limitation, are worth many times the service and the sacrifice that follow prescription and compulsion. The moment we substitute for an autonomous will, a will that is self-directed, a heteronomous will, a will that is directed by others, we have treated the human being not as a person but as a thing: we have substituted mechanism for life.

The early training and discipline of the child are for the purpose of teaching his will to form itself, to direct itself, and to walk alone. Fortunately, the child is not asked to begin his life at the point where the race began, but he is offered through the family and the school the benefits of the age-long experience of the race and of its inherited culture and efficiency. These are offered to him not as a rod for chastisement or formulas for repression but rather as food upon which to grow and as a ladder upon which to climb. If the process of training and discipline has been wisely ordered, the child will come to the end of his formal training not only with a keen appreciation for what has been done for him but with eager anticipation of the opportunity that lies open before him. It is the merest sciolism to suppose that each child can or should construct the world anew for himself. His own reactions, his own experiences, his own appreciations, and his own reflections are only important as part of a process, and that process is growing into an understanding of what the world has been and is, in order that through participation in it he may strive to alter it for the better.

The ideal society and the ideal state is a democracy in which every man and every woman is fitted to be free, to put forth the best possible effort in self-expression through participation in the great human institutions and undertakings that constitute civilization, and in service to others like-minded with themselves. This is the social aim of a soundly conceived education. To its accomplishment, all training, all discipline, all vocational preparation, and all scholarship are intended to lead. If they do not accomplish this, they are futile. “For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”