DEWEY, DISCIPLINE, AND DEMOCRACY
John F. Covaleskie
Northern Michigan University
The question of discipline is much on the minds today of philosophers,
educational practitioners, and the general public. Michel Foucault
has had a great influence on the thinking of philosophers about
the subject;1 Lee
Canter’s Assertive Discipline Program has
shaped the way a generation of practitioners deals with discipline
in their classrooms;2 and the
Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll on educational
attitudes has placed “discipline” as one of the most
common concerns of the public with regard to schools for over
two decades.3
With all the interest in the subject, surprisingly little attention has been paid to its centrality in the educational and social thought of John Dewey. His Democracy and Education4 in particular is concerned with a lengthy consideration of the nature of discipline and the role it plays in democratic society and education. The purpose of this paper is to recover some of what Dewey had to say about “discipline.”
Dewey believed that discipline is an important part of any purposeful engagement with the world. When we act in a disciplined way, we act consistently with the attainment of what he calls our “ends-in-view” — the goals we have chosen as our own. When we act in ways that are not disciplined, we act without regard to our ends-in-view, in ways that may actually frustrate our own interests.
“Discipline” has different meanings, and the context does not always make clear which is intended. Mostly, it is related in some way to maintaining “order” in the classroom.5 Generally, that order is imposed and monitored by the teacher, often using the techniques taught in “discipline programs,” the most popular of which is Canter’s Assertive Discipline.
Much current thinking about discipline has been shaped by Foucault’s work, in which it is described descending to the world to impose itself on society and all in it, virtually invisible and undetectable, acting swiftly and silently to shape us to its will. Unaware, all of society is thus shaped by its action.6 But that is a modern meaning for the term, adopted by Foucault from Durkheim, who argued that discipline was a necessary component of morality.7 On this view, children had to see discipline as a force with divine authority. Foucault closely follows Durkheim on this point, though one discerns a less positive valuation of the process in Foucault.
A discipline was originally a way of life. It is in this sense that subjects of study are called “disciplines.” To study mathematics is to submit oneself willingly to the demands of the study itself. To be a mathematician is to enter into a way of living at least a part of one’s life. However, there is an interesting paradox in this view of discipline: one masters a discipline in the act of submitting to it. So long as one resists the demands of mathematical discipline, one never quite becomes a mathematician. But when one yields to the discipline of the subject, one becomes at the same time its master.
It was this aspect of discipline that interested Dewey. He wanted to know the role of discipline in education, particularly in education for democratic citizenship. While there is not space to do any sort of justice to Dewey’s thoughts about the nature and demands of democracy, there are some things we need to recognize if we are to understand the importance of what he tells us about the nature of discipline.
The key to understanding Dewey on democracy is that he sees it not just as a form of government. It is surely that, but it is simultaneously a way of life, an ethical ideal, and a personal commitment.8 Specifically, it is a way of life in which individuals are presumed to be self directing and able to pursue their own goals and projects. No society which maintains order through constant supervision and/or coercion can be rightly called democratic. Further, individual benefit and the common good are mutually enhancing in a democracy.
He also reminds us, though this is hardly original with Dewey, that citizenship in a democratic state is not just a condition; it is an office. We, therefore, not only have rights, but also responsibilities. These latter appear to be in conflict with the pursuit of our individual interests only if we misapprehend the true nature of our interests. An article of faith for Dewey is that we are each best served by a democracy that is so constituted as to maximize the common good.9 The key to this compatibility between public and private goods is their democratic reciprocity: social membership entails certain responsibilities; in return, the society has the responsibility to take those actions and pursue those policies that remove obstacles to the realization of any individuals’ full membership and participation. This is the nature of “rights.” That there is this public responsibility commits the individuals who constitute the public to its pursuit.
Further, there is no form of social life that can allow for greater human development than democracy. An entailment of this view is that true human good is maximized for every individual in a democracy just to the extent that the society maximizes the common good. This aspect of Dewey’s argument is teleological; it trades on the notion that there is a best and most human life made possible by a best and most human social form. It is also, in keeping with Dewey’s pragmatism, offered as an hypothesis to be tested, not a dogma to be followed.
As we explore Dewey’s understanding of discipline, we will see that it is necessary for democratic life as he understands it. To begin with, democracy requires that we often postpone immediate and personal pleasure in pursuit of long-term and common goals. If we are unable to delay action while considering consequences and long-term goals, if we cannot keep in mind what sort of society we are trying to fashion, then we exemplify just the sort of lack of discipline that makes self-government impossible. As the individual and common good are tied together in a democracy, the lack of discipline makes effective pursuit of either impossible.
Discipline is not a thing; it is a description of the way we act in pursuit of our goals. When we act intelligently, we act in pursuit of an end; our actions have direction. If we act with an end in mind, and our action is conducive to the attainment of that end (and if our judgment — itself open to revision — is that the end is worthy of attainment), then we may be said to have acted intelligently. But even intelligent action need not bring us to our goal, but only closer to it; the task is to persevere in a course of action that brings us closer to the end we seek. Part of what it takes to reach our goals is simply to remember what they are in the face of distraction, and over time. To pursue a goal intelligently also requires that we be able to see and understand what it is that we are pursuing as we act. Dewey’s point is that if children cannot see the purpose of an activity as their own purpose, then the activity cannot be intelligent, and therefore cannot be educational.10 Part of what is educative about educational experiences is that children discover the value of looking ahead to their ends, checking the actual outcomes of actions against the expected ones to see if they are getting closer to their goals. Without goals, there is no aim; without aim, we cannot exercise foresight; without foresight, we cannot determine the best sequence of actions, taking into account the obstacles in the way; we cannot, therefore, consider alternative courses of action that might have a higher likelihood of success. All of this is what Dewey considers acting intelligently; if the child’s purpose is not part of the action, then the action cannot be intelligent, nor can it be disciplined.
Dewey does not think of discipline as a matter of control or a precondition of teaching, but as an integral part of education. Further, he is not interested in education as a transfer of information so much as an apprenticeship for a certain sort of social life. In this respect, discipline is required for social membership. In addition, as part of the ability to pursue worthwhile goals, discipline contributes to the creation of a good life. It is not the way teachers treat students; it is a certain way children learn to relate to the world. Dewey sees discipline as inextricably linked to a child’s interest.
First of all, note the ambiguity of “a child’s interest.” We can say that we know what is in a child’s interest and we will therefore decide what the child should and must learn. Or, we can talk of the child’s “interest in” something, that is, whether the child finds it interesting. These two meanings are not only different, they can be in direct opposition; children may be interested in playing in the middle of a busy street, but it is clearly not in their interest to do so. Socially constructive education results, according to Dewey, when children’s interests are served by the task at hand, and they recognize the fact. This is not just a matter of letting the child do what interests him or her randomly; it requires that the adults responsible for education structure the child’s environment so that the tasks which engage the child’s interest — which serve his or her aims — are also educational, and vice-versa.
Dewey anticipates many later attempts to bring motivational techniques to bear on the child in relation to school work, and he is very critical of such efforts to “motivate.”11 If the child is not motivated by the task itself or by its relationship to a desired goal, then it cannot be truly educational, for it cannot engage the child’s interest as what it is. This does not mean each task required to reach the goal is itself interesting, but that sticking through the difficult and/or tedious tasks is motivated by the fact that the goal is desired and seen as worth the effort required. A disciplined individual is one who is able to stick with the pursuit of a goal over time.
And with this understanding we now come to the heart of discipline in education for Dewey: it grows out of the task itself. Dewey sees the completion of a task as closely related to “will”; a person must exercise will in pursuit of a desired goal that is not easily or immediately attainable. Now will, as he conceives it, is made up of “two factors….One has to do with the foresight of results, the other with the depth of hold the foreseen outcome has upon the person.”12
He then defines discipline:
A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far forth disciplined. Add to this ability a power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in the face of distraction, confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline.13Discipline is the mark and the means of effective agency, the ability to act in accordance with one’s choices and commitments. Without agency, one can be controlled, but one cannot be disciplined. Only those with discipline are candidates for citizenship in a democracy, for only they can participate in an orderly society in pursuit of long-term common goals without coercion or force.
The attention to the child’s interest does not mean the child only does what he or she wants to do at any given time, though that is how Dewey often is interpreted; the issue is whether making a child “perform an uncongenial task” is going to help that child thereby develop the ability to “recognize what one is about” and persist in accomplishment.14 But, to understand this notion as Dewey did, we must remember that recognizing what one is about entails knowing and valuing the aim of one’s actions.
Asking adults to reflect on their own experience, he reminds us that interest is an integral part of what we take as essential to doing a good job: “If one were engaging a lawyer or doctor, it would never occur to one to reason that the person so engaged would stick to his work more conscientiously if it was so uncongenial to him that he did it merely from a sense of obligation.”15 No, we would recognize in these cases that interest is an essential ingredient of the discipline necessary to stick to a job and do it well. Dewey simply suggests this is no less true of children. With respect to democratic citizenship, the task is life-long and requires attention, forethought, and a willingness to pursue at times the most distant of aims.
The common view is that discipline is a matter of drilling, as with soldiers, and Dewey suggests that whatever results from this is not discipline, but merely routinization of action. Worse, it has no apparent purpose: “I notice that when no sensible reason can be given for a procedure, somebody says it is necessary for discipline.”16 He argues that discipline should be seen as a positive achievement, a result of genuine education, and the ability to pursue one’s own ends. It is, therefore, “identical with freedom” and a necessary part of the democratic character.17 Without discipline, freedom is self-defeating; one cannot attain one’s goals, and therefore, one can fashion neither a good life nor a democratic one. Freedom without discipline becomes the freedom to not reach our goals.
Crucial is the understanding that discipline is the ability to stick to tasks in pursuit of desired ends, and that it cannot be developed apart from those sorts of tasks that call forth discipline in their doing; an essential part of this is that the task must engage the child’s interest — that is, the child must see the task as related to his or her desired ends. On this view it becomes obvious that I cannot discipline another, least of all by placing that person’s behavior under my control. I can only help in the development of discipline by providing him or her with tasks that are conducive to its development and then helping him or her to understand the relationship between action, ends, and consequences. Children can learn to act with discipline, and the way they do so is by discovering that by so acting they can reach their goals more consistently. Adults can foster this learning in school, and should do so.
Dewey’s insight not only reconstructs the “discipline problem” from one of control to one of pedagogy and curriculum, but the current state of affairs that constitutes the so-called “problem” can be seen as the normal and healthy response of minds placed in situations that are not engaging. If the tasks assigned in schools do not engage the mind, then the mind will seek employment elsewhere. Order in a classroom can be obtained in at least two ways: we can impose it by direct action on the students, or we can present the students with engaging tasks that generate their own order. Both strategies will yield a form of order, but the two are not at all equivalent states. When we are forced to use the former, it is because the tasks are not themselves sufficiently engaging to generate order, and are, therefore, not educative. They also fail to prepare students for democratic citizenship.
Dewey struggled against a misunderstanding of his work that inferred that children should be allowed to do what is pleasing at any given moment. He very specifically rejected that idea. A child’s interest was to be taken into account, but it was also to be shaped; this is one of the central purposes of education. Dewey’s was the more subtle point that while we cannot hope to educate if we do not engage the child’s interest, we also must use the engagement in a way that is educational and socially formative (to the extent that he would not claim this formulation to be a redundancy).18 Freedom to pursue goals effectively is possible only for those so formed in their education that they are capable of acting in a directed, focused, and intelligent manner.
Even punishing a child for inattention is one way of trying to make him realize that the matter is not a thing of complete unconcern; it is one way of arousing “interest,” or bringing about a sense of connection. In the long run, its value is measured by whether it supplies a mere physical excitation to act in the way desired by the adult or whether it leads the child “to think” — that is, to reflect upon his acts and impregnate them with aims [Emphasis in original].19Dewey also takes note of the conditions and expectations that exist in schools that lead to what he considers inappropriate practice relative to discipline. He criticizes educational practice while understanding the reasons for it. He seems to suggest that, since schools are not places where the resources exist to create democratically constructive experiences, teachers impose order that would otherwise not exist. However, he wants us to be very much aware of what it is that we are not doing by relying on teachers to impose order on classrooms that would otherwise reduce to chaos. In short, by imposing order, the teacher may indeed stave off chaos, but she or he cannot thereby claim to be educating.20
Children need a reason to think that rules matter. They need a social aim such that abiding by the rules becomes a means to achieve the desired goal. In classrooms, the reason is too often that there will be punishment for violation or reward for obedience, and that is just not what Dewey meant by “discipline.” Rather, he believes that the relationship between the rules and the realization of the ideal of democratic citizenship can be the motivation children need to value the rules.
For the real work children are doing while they are in school is growing into full membership in a society, and doing their share of shaping that society at the same time. And, Dewey would be quick to remind us, not just any society, but a democratic one. Thus, children need to be taught more than just rule following; he took seriously the proposition that citizens in democracies are responsible for making the rules. So what Dewey calls “the standards of reference to the work which [the student] has to do” are the standards by which we can construct a decent and democratic society.21 Hence,
[i]nterest in community welfare, and interest that is intellectual and practical, as well as emotional — an interest, that is to say, in perceiving whatever makes for social order and progress, and in carrying these principles into execution — is the moral habit to which all the special school habits must be related if they are to be animated by the breath of life.22Elsewhere, Dewey puts the alternative views of discipline as neatly as it may be possible to do, pointing directly to what is at stake in the question:
Within the organization [of school life] is found the principle of school discipline or order. Of course, order is simply a thing which is relative to an end. If you have an end in view of forty or fifty children learning set lessons, to be recited to a teacher, your discipline must be devoted to securing that result. But if the end in view is the development of a spirit of social cooperation and community life, discipline must grow out of and be relative to such an aim.23Dewey then points out the obvious conclusion to this line of thought:
But the school has been so set apart, so isolated from the ordinary conditions and motives of life, that the place where children are sent for discipline is the one place in the world where it is most difficult to get experience — the mother of all discipline worth the name. It is only when a narrow and fixed image of traditional school discipline dominates that one is in any danger of overlooking that deeper and infinitely wider discipline that comes from having a job to do in constructive work.24Individuals who fail to develop discipline are hardly suited to self-government; the same is true of those who have been constantly subject to the will of others and disconnected from the purposes of their own work. This is why Dewey says that we can only be free if we are disciplined.
One must keep in mind the social purposes of schools, and the nature and needs of a democratic society. What Dewey tries to do is chart the waters between the twin dangers of “education” left to the random whim of the young and “education” under the total control of adults. Of course, his point is that no experience that is under the control of another could possibly be educational, which is the core problem with American education, as Dewey sees it.
He takes this tack for reasons both of pragmatism and ideological commitment: on the first count, he argues that children will simply learn better if they are interested and engaged in trying to learn what we are trying to teach; on the second count, he argues that the needs of democracy require that children learn to be self-directed, and that they must therefore experience that form of discipline that grows out of pursuing their own aims. It is these twin goals of Dewey’s that a focus on “discipline” apart from a meaningful task distorts and perverts.
Dewey’s discipline is an enabling and positive part of human potential. It is developed through practice, and it provides for the possibility of successful agency. Dewey would reject the Foucauldian notion that discipline is subservience, and that all order is the result of an externally imposed discipline. From the outside, it may be possible to find significance in the apparent similarities between the order of the prison and that of the monastery. But to do so, we must negate the experience of the inhabitants of these institutions and ignore a great deal of what we know of human experience. It matters a great deal whether one is a prisoner or a disciple.
The nature of discipline, and the proper way to foster it among the young, is an important issue because of the possibility that our views here are self-fulfilling; if we treat individuals as though they are not agents consistently enough and from a young enough age, we may make it so. One of the things we are teaching children is what should count as reasons for behaving in one way rather than another. Deci and Ryan suggest that giving external rewards to children for playing with markers — a thing they originally did of their own volition — will reduce their desire to continue playing without a reward disconnected from the pleasure intrinsic to the act of playing itself.25 If we make children experience discipline as Foucault describes it, we may well hasten the day when society really is as he portrays it; on the other hand, acting on Dewey’s vision of discipline as directed by interest may increase the likelihood that his vision of a democratic society may one day be realized.
For a
response to this essay, see Connell.
1. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
2. Lee Canter and Marlene Canter, Assertive Discipline: A Take Charge Approach for Today’s Educator (Santa Monica, Calif.: Canter and Associates, 1976).
3. Stanley M. Elam, Lowell C. Rose, and Alec M. Gallup, “The 24th Annual Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa Poll of the Public’s Attitude Toward the Public Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan 74 (September 1992): 41- 53.
4. John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: The Free Press, 1916/1966).
5. And in society as a whole. The discipline of the educational system is generally seen as indicative of discipline in the society as a whole.
6. Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
7. Emile Durkheim, On Moral Education: A Study in the Theory and Application of the Sociology of Education (New York: The Free Press, 1961/1973).
8. My thanks to Emily Robertson for her help in understanding the importance of Dewey’s thought in this regard.
9. John Dewey, “Ethics,” in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 17, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1932/1985), 349.
10. Everything Dewey says about the nature of discipline is just as true for adults as it is for children; it is the nature of education that is under consideration, not the nature of childhood. When we do consider the nature of childhood, some features become apparent that are not true for adults, notably the need for direction and environmental control, but the nature of education and the importance of interest remain essentially the same.
11. Dewey, Democracy and Education, 127.
12. Ibid., 128.
13. Ibid, 129.
14. Ibid., 129.
15. Ibid., 130.
16. John Dewey, “Period of Technic,” (Brigham Young Lecture #6), in John Dewey: The Later Works 1925-1953, vol. 17, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1932/1985), 284-297.
17. John Dewey, “Some Elements of Character,” (Brigham Young Lecture #10), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953 vol 17, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University, 1990), 183.
18. On first glance this may seem familiar ground to readers familiar with Foucault, but the difference is fundamental. Whereas for Foucault, agency is established only as we resist disciplinary power; for Dewey, agency just is the direction of action under discipline.
19. Dewey, Democracy and Education, 129.
20. John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Collier Books, 1938/1963), 55. It is this facet of what we commonly call “discipline” that Foucault has labelled “sovereign power.”
21. John Dewey, Moral Principle in Education (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1909/1975), 16.
22. Ibid., 17.
23. John Dewey, The School and Society (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1899/1980), 11.
24. Ibid., 12.
25. Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, “Curiosity and Self-Directed Learning: The Role of Motivation in Education (ERIC Document #ED206 377, 1982).