Many people today believe that maintaining order in the school is
becoming difficult, though this should not come as a surprise. Society
itself is changing and authority is under attack. Society has changed earlier
100. primitive people fought for food, women, home or fuel. As
civilisation grew the need for laws to regulate the action of individuals and
groups’ in the community was recognised. Laws were made and given an
aura of holiness because they were necessary to enable society to survive.
But inevitably, there were those who felt they were treated unjustly, and
challenged the law often by force. The problem arises when some section
of society sees law undermined, and perceive profit for themselves in the
challenge itself, and act without regard to consequence. When violence is
seen to bring advantage, violence increases. That is what is happening
today. Young people see the example of violence as the successful
challenge to authority and tend to emulate it. Communication media
attempt to present the news objectively, give violence and disruption a
tacit acceptance, and do not condemn it. Youngsters, seeing it
uncondemned, come to regard it as acceptance.
According to an expert Sociológist, children are today treated
with tolerance which allows for the rejection of authority. Paradoxically,
parents are often critical of lax school discipline whilst tolerating such
behaviour at home which would not have been widely accepted 20 or 30
years ago. Even more difficult to understand is that any step to make
discipline in school more effective is questioned.
Being brought up in a tolerant atmosphere, children are often
shocked when attempts are made to make them behave reasonably at
school. They find themselves having to adopt to two quite different
behavioural patterns. This has a traumatic effect on some children, which
is itself an incitement to indiscipline.
Society, as a whole, appears to accept that the majority of
children want to learn, and that to enable them to do so, discipline must be
maintained in schools, Schools in this age cannot operate in isolation;
whatever happens and whatever is tolerated in the world has an effect on
the school. The attitude of adults with whom children come into contact, either by direct experience or through media condition, the attitude a
pupil to all, influences on their lives.
Until recently, the few who disrupted school with
behavioural problem were from environments which thrived on
ones, and the decline of censorship, has introduced a much wider group to and misbehaviour. But the growth of mass media, specially the visual
extremes of behaviour. Thus, a society which expects and believes that a
children must be educated in a reasonably ordered situation, tolerates the
reasonable order. The problem arising from this contradiction is: when
daily visual exposition of activities which can undermine and
schools attempts the reasonable order which society wants,the support of
the society is conditional. And, in the long run, this situation becomes
intolerable. There is an increasing amount of violence and disruptive
behaviour.Liberal attitude among adult have probably given encouragment to these youngsters who have such disruptive inclinations. Be it any country, one sees the difficulty into which undue tolerance
lead.
Rules represent order, and however anarchic we may feel, we
need order. No one knows completely the answer to the problem of
maintaining order in schools. Schools cannot operate on their own. This is
a social problem which cannot be disregarded by society and left to the
schools. Neither must the schools assume that the teaching profession
alone can deal with it. One reason for the dissatisfaction of the young with
the society and family pattern in which they grow is, there is no hard and
fast line to give them security. They find themselves growing in an
atmosphere of adult uncertainty, leaving them bewildered.
Parental involvement and understanding is vital to the schools,
both in the avoidance of extreme indiscipline, and to its solution when it
occurs. The main duty of the parents is to equip the child for living and
for making the best of life, and how to benefit from the advantages of
being a social animal. One of the lessons should be that, in order to get the
advantage, certain sacrifices have to be made.
Society must face up to the problem society is creating.
Tolerance, overindulgence, neglect of standards,abandonment of
guidance, unwillingness to accept reason, are social attitudes which are
affecting the school. At the same time, social neglect in poor housing, unemployment, deprivation, lack of provisions, are also stimulating and
fostering the development of bad attitude.
To discipline a child means to teach him how to live with others.
It does not mean breaking but teaching, not only through rules, but its own
attitude towards others and our own towards it. It is essential to convince
that it is possible and also, if necessary, to disagree, but this need not
involve loss of dignity,
The thinking needs long term plan for social change. The fact is
schools have their problems. They must be dealt with and society must
supply the support to the schools. This is demand which involves the
protection and well-being of the majority of children, who want to get the
best out of the very effective educational provision. If investment in
children’s education is investment in our society’s future, then it is
essential that society safeguard its investment by supporting those to whom
it has entrusted the realisation of its children’s future.