REVISITING DEWEY’S CONCEPT OF DISCIPLINE

Jeanne Connell
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana

In his educational writings, Dewey criticizes the nature of discipline in schools. External enforcement of rules, excessive concern for order, and even teacher directed study are forms of discipline that Dewey finds contradictory to an education designed to prepare students for active participation in a democratic society. The top-down, compulsory, punitive nature of classroom discipline affects students negatively, “creating an aversion to study and a belief that using the mind is disagreeable.”¹ While the word discipline includes definitions associated with control, punishment, and imposition, discipline also means “to train or develop by instruction and exercise, especially in self-control.”² It is this latter definition that captures Dewey’s attention.

Covaleskie articulates clearly Dewey’s intent to associate the concept of discipline as self-control or “interest directing will” within the reflective process.³ As part of reflection, students must become more self-directed or self-disciplined by framing the purposes of inquiry themselves, rather than being directed by authority or by fear of punishment. But, as Dewey points out, these purposes should reflect social concerns of the community and not simply concerns of the individual. Dewey’s attempt to reconcile the antagonism between individual and social interests is not fully resolved by simply equating the freedom to frame inquiry based upon individual interests with the need for students as members of a society to frame inquiry based upon social purposes.

The movement from teacher-directed discipline to the idea of self-discipline promotes changes in the highly formalized structure of the classroom. A shift from the idea of a formalized class instruction to social group participation creates an environment more conducive to learning. Studies on classroom climate demonstrate that conditions for learning improve when classes are less punitive and more apt to promote trusting relationships among students and teachers.⁴ One could argue the Deweyan theme that the crisis of discipline in schools today creates a need to implement a program like Canter’s Assertive Discipline, and stems from the lack of attention to environing conditions that promote the positive side of discipline.

When Dewey focuses on the role of discipline within the process of reflection, he stresses its positive attributes: “In truth, discipline is positive and constructive. It is power, power of control of the means necessary to achieve ends and also power to value and test ends.”⁵ In the context of the reflective process, Dewey describes discipline as the postponement of immediate responses. The goal is to inhibit or to reconstruct natural impulses and desires of the inquirer. Through reflection and judgment immediate impulses are inhibited long enough for individuals to “stop and think”⁶ and thereby connect with other possible tendencies to action.⁷

Dewey’s concept of self-discipline, however, relies upon social interests to influence the direction and purposes of individual inquiry. Freedom and social interests become mutually enriching and compatible. Dewey contends that the direction or source of self-control comes from the individual’s membership in a community. As members of a community we expect some type of social control. Dewey argues that “no one would deny that the ordinary good citizen is as a matter of fact subject to a great deal of social control and that a considerable part of this control is not felt to involve restriction of personal freedom.”⁸ In other words, we come to accept limits on our behavior as part of our membership in a group. Dewey notes that even the “theoretical anarchist who commits to the idea that state control is an unmitigated evil, believes that other forms of social control would operate.”⁹ The anarchist seeks control mechanisms that are more natural than presently exercised by the state. But the question remains as to the nature of social control.

The control mechanism for the individual rests upon some type of membership or voluntary involvement in a community. While Dewey frequently uses the situation of children playing games to illustrate the mutual compatibility between freedom and social control, he finds the common interest generated by family life an even more congenial model. When children play games they submit voluntarily to the rules of the game. Here, rules are part of the game and are not viewed as imposition, as long as the rules are enforced fairly. For example, children might object to an umpire’s call in baseball, but they would not call for a change in rules. But the competitive nature of games fails to fully capture the sense of common interest and mutuality established by a more cooperatively based unit such as the well-ordered family.¹⁰ The family bonds serve as the glue that connects individual and family concerns, just as commitments to the community serve to connect individuals and the society-at-large. Even within a well-ordered family, however, there might be numerous conflicts. Furthermore, on a larger scale it seems that conflicts can be as numerous and powerful as commonalities. Dewey fails to suggest how these conflicts might be negotiated.

One of the major problems of balancing individual and social interests rest with how group interests are defined. Dewey wants to avoid rules that are based upon personal whim and seems to assume that common interests will be clear enough and compelling enough to promote unity. But when interests divide a group, as in a large, heterogeneous society such as ours, the means for achieving a balance between freedom and control is less obvious. The rules of society, unlike the rules of some games, may indeed unfairly advantage one group over another. Dewey prefers to discuss commonalities rather than competing interests within a group, and thus he provides less insight into the problems created by conflicting interests. Some examination of how groups come to define common interests is needed, especially when political power among members of a group or between associated groups is not evenly distributed.

There are times when adult-directed discipline is necessary. Dewey argues that unruly, rebellious children cannot be permitted to stand permanently in the way of the educative activities of others.¹¹ He even suggests that progressive schools might have more problem-children than traditional schools, if parents use progressive schools as a placement of last resort. But the crucial point Dewey makes is that teacher-directed discipline should be minimized.

One key to establishing a truly democratic society is to assure greater participation in the rule-making process as well as to provide democratically based mechanisms for change. If taken seriously, this argument suggests major changes in school organization that go beyond superficial efforts at student government in schools. A modern example of an increased level of student involvement is found in the development of peer mediation programs, where students assume a major role in resolving conflicts among their peers. Dewey argues that “children should be taught to comply with school regulations because of their awareness of the meaning of and need for such regulations.”¹² Participation includes experiences in rule-making as well.

It is not enough that children should be law-abiding; they must also be lawmakers in school, just as in adult life, as voting citizens or as officeholders, they will engage in lawmaking. Providing such experience for children and cultivating such habits and attitudes in them, can contribute significantly to social reconstruction.¹³

While Dewey advocates student participation in the rule-making process, it is clear that Dewey relies on teachers as leaders of the group to guide students efforts as active citizens of the school community. Perhaps the idea of the charter school, where parents, teachers, and students jointly participate in determining school aims, more closely approximates the level of student involvement that Dewey envisioned. The question raised here is: do schools need to provide students with experience that helps them to make a transition from rule-following to rule-making?

In closing, I concur with Covaleskie’s thesis that educators can broaden their understanding of discipline by examining Dewey’s attempt to reconstruct discipline as issues of pedagogy and curriculum rather than as problems of control. Learning requires discipline that both serves the demands of scholarship and encourages self-discipline from students. But self-discipline needs to be distinguished from conformity gained through covert control mechanisms such as the “hidden curriculum”¹⁴ built into classroom practices. While Dewey advocates a greater balance between freedom and social control by connecting them through common interests, many questions remain unanswered. Dewey expects that a teacher acts justly and fairly by serving as an agent or representative of the interests of society as a whole.¹⁵ The idea of common interests, however, requires further exploration and pragmatic inquiry.

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1. John Dewey, How We Think (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath & Co., 1933), 86. See also “Some Elements of Character” in John Dewey the Later Works: 1925-1953, vol. 17, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1990), 343. Dewey notes that: “There is a good deal of school discipline which is simply a scheme for relieving children of responsibility; and when I see teachers promoted because of mistaken admiration for such school government, I think that the public money is paid to a man [sic] for carrying the entire burden of the school themselves and leaving the children barbarians and savages—unable to face any responsibility of life when it comes.”

2. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary Fifth ed., s.v. “discipline.”

3. John F. Covaleskie, “Dewey, Discipline, and Democracy,” in Philosophy of Education 1994, ed. Michael Katz (Urbana, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1995).

4. Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

5. John Dewey, How We Think, 86-87.

6. John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Collier Books, 1963), 64.

7. Ibid., 64.

8. Ibid., 52.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., 54.

11. Ibid., 57.

12. John Dewey, John Dewey Lectures in China, 1919-1920, ed. Robert Clopton and Tsuin-Chen Ou (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1973), 220.

13. Ibid., 220.

14. Philip Jackson, Life in Classrooms (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968).

15. John Dewey, Experience and Education, 54.