School Discipline and Factors effecting School Discipline

School discipline is the system of rules, punishments and behavioral strategies appropriate to the regulation of children and the maintenance of order in schools. Its aim is to create a safe and conducive learning environment in the classroom.

School discipline has two main goals: (1) ensure the safety of staff and students, and (2) create an environment conducive to learning. Serious student misconduct involving violent or criminal behavior defeats these goals and often makes headlines in the process. However, the commonest discipline problems involve noncriminal student behavior (Moles 1989).

It is important to keep the ultimate goal in mind while working to improve school discipline. As education researcher Daniel Duke (1989) points out, "the goal of good behavior is necessary, but not sufficient to ensure academic growth." Effective school discipline strategies seek to encourage responsible behavior and to provide all students with a satisfying school experience as well as to discourage misconduct.

The word “discipline’ is derived from the Latin root “disciples” meaning a pupil or disciple. Naturally, the problem of discipline was taken to consist in bringing the conduct of the pupils into conformity with ideas and standards of the master. The pupil had to develop the virtue of docility and plasticity so that the teacher might impress his personality on them and mould them in his own image. This was the conception of the relationship between pupil and teacher everywhere. Its modern concept is very broad and inclusive one. It does not recognize difference between mental and moral behavior for the purpose of control, nor, in fact for any other purpose.

In fact, the individual mind is conceived of “as a function of social life-as not capable of operating by itself but as requiring continual stimulus from social agencies and finding its nutrition in social purpose”.

Modern view of discipline is to bring the same unity in the educative process and educative material as we find in real life. School must be a social organism in which social situations should be provided to stimulate and direct the impulses of the pupils in the pursuit of the common purposes through cooperative or shared activity. To obtain good result is also another view. Cooperation should improve the intellectual, moral, social and physical activities of the students in school environment and these must be directed towards the realization of the certain goals.

Purpose of the discipline is also develop the attitudes, habits, ideas, and code of conduct through the medium of the social life of the school which should be organized on a cooperative basis and inspired by higher ethical teaching of religion.

The purpose of discipline is to help the individual to acquire knowledge, habits, interests and ideals which conduce to the well-being of himself, his fellows and society as a whole. It gives realization to the school that it must be reconstructed on the lines of the development and conscious pursuit of common ends in a cooperative spirit, each member contributing to the common good in accordance with special gifts. Life in the school thus organized becomes similar to the, and continuous with, life in democratic society, and discipline becomes co-extensive with the whole of school life.

Factors Affecting School Discipline:

What School Characteristics Are Associated with Discipline Problems?

When Johns Hopkins University researchers Gary D. Gottfredson and Denise C. Gottfredson analyzed data from over 600 of the nation's secondary schools, they found that the following school characteristics were associated with discipline problems: Rules were unclear or perceived as unfairly or inconsistently enforced; students did not believe in the rules; teachers and administrators did not know what the rules were or disagreed on the proper responses to student misconduct; teacher-administration cooperation was poor or the administration inactive; teachers tended to have punitive attitudes; misconduct was ignored; and schools were large or lacked adequate resources for teaching (cited in Gottfredson 1989).

After reviewing dozens of studies on student behavior, Duke agreed with many of the Gottfredsons' conclusions. Orderly schools, he noted, usually balance clearly established and communicated rules with a climate of concern for students as individuals, and small alternative schools often maintain order successfully with fewer formal rules and a more flexible approach to infractions than large schools typically have.

How Can Schools Decrease Disruptive Behavior?

Working to change the above-mentioned characteristics may decrease disruptive behavior. First, rules and the consequences of breaking them should be clearly specified and communicated to staff, students, and parents by such means as newsletters, student assemblies, and handbooks. Meyers and Pawlas (1989) recommend periodically restating the rules, especially after students return from summer or winter vacation.

Once rules have been communicated, fair and consistent enforcement helps maintain students' respect for the school's discipline system. Consistency will be greater when fewer individuals are responsible for enforcement. Providing a hearing process for students to present their side of the story and establishing an appeal process will also increase students' and parents' perceptions of fairness.

The Gottfredsons suggest creating smaller schools or dividing large schools into several schools-within-schools (cited in Duke). This has been done in several Portland, Oregon, middle schools that have large numbers of at-risk students. For example, as Director of Instruction Leigh Wilcox explained, Lane Middle School has been divided into three minischools, each with a complete age range of students taught by a team of teachers (telephone interview, July 10, 1992).

Discipline policies should distinguish between categories of offenses. Minor infractions may be treated flexibly, depending on the circumstances, while nonnegotiable consequences are set for serious offenses. Actual criminal offenses may be reported to the police as part of a cooperative anticrime effort (Gaustad 1991).

Lack of Leadership in Teacher

• Teachers have no respect as they had in the past.
• Students do not show respect the teachers
• Teachers get involved in the cesspool of politics and self-interest
• Teachers lose their ideals and do not pay their intentions for the development of the students
• Teachers usually excite the students and use them as tools of private tuitions.
• Miserable economic condition is also one of the main reason for lack of leadership
• They are incapable of giving the guidance to the students

The Current Education System

• Current education system is always being criticized
• Students came to know that education given to them is not good
• Students have no regard for education
• Students just consider the education for the sake of their earning
• In present, primary aim of educational system is to get good position in the annual examination
• Students use their unfair means for achieving their objectives 

Lack of Sustaining Ideal in the Students

• Society has pitiable condition now a days
• Social changes are going to be changed
• Moral values have shaken our society
• Individual have no security of his life
• Lack of healthy ideals among the students

 Economic Difficulties

• Our economic condition has its deplorable degree
• Increased population created many national problems
• Less resources

Lack of Communication

• Between staff
• Between students
• Between parents

Disruptive behavior of the teacher

• No interest toward the students
• No new methodologies
• No interest in the curriculum
• No interest in the development of the students’ personalities

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