Discipline is a shared responsibility

Discipline is a shared responsibility

Simon Marcus Gower, Jakarta

Recently the Letters pages of The Jakarta Post have seen a
flurry of letters concerning matters of school policies,
discipline and parental responsibility. The spark that lit this
fire of debate was a letter from Etie Dirapradja on Oct. 20 that
was essentially a cry for help and advice.

Although this original letter was in many ways quite sad to
read, it has been the source of some interesting discourse over
the matters it raised. The letter entitled Who should be
responsible? reflected on the fact that the writer's daughter had
often been locked out of school in the mornings because she had
arrived too late and this had been happening without the mother's
(writer's) knowledge.

The reactions to this letter have ranged from condemnation of
the mother as a bad parent to condemnation of the school as out
of date and guilty of endangering the child's welfare. Whilst it
is probably reasonable to identify some degrees of guilt in both
parties, it hardly seems useful or constructive to condemn either
one.

Instead, once again, this kind of incident should highlight
for us all the great need there is to develop partnership between
schools and parents to ensure, as far as is possible, that the
children are gaining positive and useful experiences by going to
and attending school. The child that is clumsily locked out of
school simply because he or she is a little late cannot possibly
be seen to be having a positive or beneficial learning
experience.

Indeed quite the opposite can quite easily be seen to be
happening. For some students that unfortunate "threat" of being
locked out may be sufficient to get them to school on time but
for others it is a useful little rule that they can use to avoid
going to school altogether. For example, one student noted for
his scams to get out of school would gladly admit to coordinating
with his friends when they wanted to "show up late" for school
and so be locked out.

For this, less conscientious, school student the lateness rule
was something that helped him, effectively, skip school and he
would coordinate this with his friends so that they, as a group,
could go to a mall or go bowling instead of attending school.
Here the apparent strictness of the school is playing into the
hands of these less conscientious students. When their report
cards show any absences they can simply account for them with a
"Well, I arrived three minutes late that day and was locked out."

Ultimately, the notion of a "threat" of being locked out as
being a useful tool or mechanism in guiding towards disciplined
behavior is at best a tenuous one and at the most likely level it
has to be considered as unrealistic and counterproductive. How
many other settings or situations in life will students encounter
in which they are belligerently locked out from where they
belong? Not too many, it has to be said.

Some people would, however, quite reasonably and rightly say
that the lesson of good time-keeping is an excellent one for a
school to target. But lessons and the learning of rules do not
have to come about through dogged determination and belligerent
application through dictatorial behavior. Where lessons and rules
are applied in this way bitterness and rejection can accrue.

Another example shows how this can happen. A particularly
diligent student was attending rehearsals for her part in an
orchestra performance. She had notified her classroom teacher of
this and so had been arriving at school a little later but
allowances had been made for this. But then one morning her
school principal caught her arriving late and without listening
to the student's explanations blindly insisted that the student
leave the school immediately as a "late student".

This diligent student, who had always been a careful adherent
to rules, left the school in tears but returned the next day, not
with a greater respect for the school's rules but with a seething
dislike and bitterness towards the principal who had blindly and
ignorantly wronged her.

This, then, is surely a key aspect to the application of rules
and the achievement of any degree of discipline. Good rules and
good discipline should not be blind to or ignorant of the world
around them. They should be integrated into the world around
them in such a way that they make sense for all; so that all
parties can see their wisdom and value.

Should anyone, and in particular a school student, transgress
a rule or fail in achieving the accepted level of discipline, it
should not mean that that person is immediately ostracized from
society and is in some way labeled or "black marked" as a sinner
or wrongdoer. It is quite likely that there may be mitigating
circumstances that explain why a person, and in particular a
school student, has transgressed and/ or made a mistake.

Obviously repeat, as it were, offenses would signify that the
student is not learning to abide by the rules but it is surely
one of the responsibilities of the rule-makers to investigate and
explore why the transgression is happening and how it can be
avoided in the future.

One of the most effective ways of achieving this is through
involvement with the parents. The partnership of school and
parents has to be the most powerful and effective way of getting
to the root cause of problems and to their solutions. But sadly,
all too often, in Indonesia parents are not sufficiently involved
in the formulae for the provision of education.

This was exemplified by that original letter of October the
20th in which the mother was left completely ignorant of her
daughter's late arrivals for school and consequent rejection of
entry. The parent simply did not know and so was unable to take
the simple step of making sure that her daughter left earlier for
school.

Children will sometimes not be open and forward in confiding
in their parents and likewise too school can be a forbidding
place if rules are applied with too severe stricture and the
notion of "calling a student's parents" is used as a threat. This
can create a sense of isolation and exclusion for the student
that can be very dangerous.

Instead, rules and discipline should be looked upon as value-
systems that we share; that are there to help us do the right
thing and make the right choices. We should see and act upon a
shared responsibility for discipline that is shared between
school, parents and students. Then discipline can be constructive
and useful and not something that students live in fear or
loathing of.

The writer is an Education Consultant.