The Duty of Discipline

Correction as an essential part of the teaching process. Suppose that in the schoolroom not even the teacher cared enough to correct, or that in the home, not even parents cared enough to correct — how would anyone ever learn or make progress or ever know right from wrong? But, as was added, correction should include these essential elements: “persuasion, …long suffering, …gentleness and meekness… Reproving betimes with sharpness… and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy.”¹ This added observation is from Emerson: “The heart has its arguments, with which the understanding is not acquainted. So intimate is this alliance of mind and heart, that… the remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is love… the redeemer and instructor of souls, … is love.”² Now there is another essential inseparably associated with everything we learn in life — and that is discipline — the duty of discipline. The very word is unpopular with young people, and sometimes with parents, and with others also — and always we need an understanding of it. Discipline does not primarily mean punishment (although it would not exclude it if and as essential), but it does mean a recognition of responsibility, a recognition of standards, of law, and of the effort — the price — for learning any lesson, for acquiring any skill, for developing any good habit, for breaking any bad habit. Discipline applies to all teaching and training, to the moulding and strengthening of character, of control, especially of self-control, and it ought not to be an unpopular idea since it is so absolutely essential to the learning of every lesson of life. No one would ever learn, no one would ever develop talent, no one would ever control his thoughts — or his actions — or ever grow to mature character or dependable conduct; no one would ever learn to study, to think, to practice, to perform — or even learn reverence or honesty or honor without a sense of the duty of discipline. William Penn gave us this sentence of short summary: “If thou wouldst be happy and easie in thy Family, above all things observe Discipline. Every one in it should know their Duty; …and whatever else is done or omitted, be sure to begin and end with god.”³ No one ever achieved any high and lasting purpose, or an abiding peace inside himself without a real recognition of the duty of discipline, in all of which self-discipline, self-control, is most exceedingly essential.