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reactions to this letter have ranged from condemnation of the mother as a bad parent to condemnation of the school as out of date and guilty of endangering the child's welfare.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.