Is Education Losing Its Moral Purpose?

Discipline leads to self-discipline and healthy participation in our democratic institutions.

Last year I was interviewed to be head of the United World College in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The school is a special place formed with the idealistic aim of helping the process of restoration and integration after the end of the brutal civil conflict between 1992 and 1995.

I loved the mission of the school and it seemed perfect for my first headship given my post-conflict experience working in Hargeisa, Somalia, training teachers.

Three days of interviews in Bosnia culminated in a presentation to all the teachers and students on the future of the school. It was more than a little terrifying. UWC kids are switched-on, debate-club types and many arrive on full scholarships, having demonstrated academic excellence in countries affected by conflicts such as Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Because the school is located in Bosnia Hercegovina, UWC Mostar specializes in post-conflict reconstruction; the school shares a building with a local grammar school with segregated classrooms.  This was a school founded with a lofty aim; assist in the post-conflict reconstruction of the former Yugoslavia. No small feat when you consider that the Croatian and Bosnian Curriculum is taught in segregated classrooms in the same schools but different classrooms across the country.

My chosen topic was discipline. When I was practicing my speech back in Chile my mate Chris said he thought he thought it was quite good but not what he would have expected from me. I had discovered ResearchED around this time and Chris wondered if I had been radicalized by the internet (lol). The message was: discipline is necessary for wellbeing, learning and healthy school culture. The speech was okay. I had something written down but I ended up improvising most of it and I think, in some rambling way, I got my point across. During questions at the end, one 18-year-old kid raised his hand with an impish “this is gonna be a good one” look on his face… “what if my morals are different from the school’s rules,” he asked. Mr sweaty-palms here assumed he was talking about school uniform or something. There were rumors that the UWC kids had a looser dress code than the local school with whom they shared a building. Is that what he meant? I scanned him for outward signs of ideology but he wasn’t wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, beret or MAGA baseball cap. Phew. With no more information available, I said something lame about how it depends on the circumstances but that in general, societies function best when people put the group above their own needs.

As I was walking back chatting to the other candidate (the one who got the job) and the current head I asked them if the kids question referred to anything. The current head told me kid had gotten in trouble for heading out into the town after they were supposed to be in bed to paint over the Swastikas painted by Neo-Nazis in this deeply divided town. He’d gotten into a fight with some locals and been reprimanded. So the question was, why discipline this kid if he was doing something as worthy as removing symbols of hatred and division? Why ask for obedience even in cases when one’s own values might be in conflict with what’s expected from authority? This gets to the heart of school discipline, which is often about respecting norms and rules and complying with them.

If I had known about them beforehand this is the answer I would have prepared:

Listen, buddy, I get why you did it and I think you are incredibly courageous. The IB asks for caring, risk-takers; you embody that! However, here’s the thing, I can’t support what you did. I would have given you a consequence if I were in charge. You got into a fight and put yourself in danger. You caused a lot of worry for your teachers and classmates. You could have been stabbed. But here's the thing mate, beyond that, there is something even more important and that’s the rule of law. Conflict and civil strife occur when institutions crumble. The break-down of civility and rule of law are at the centre of violence and suffering. Many of the people here know what it is like to experience the violence, trauma and emotional suffering that occurs when a rule-based order caves. Take a look at what Trump is doing right now; the guy is flagrantly disobeying the American Constitution whilst kissing the American flag. We need to resist this through the institutions he is aiming to degrade. In doing so these institutions become stronger. The answer is rejecting Trump, not rejecting the flag he is kissing.

When I ask, "has education lost its moral purpose?" I ask because neither progressives nor traditionalists appear to want to recognize the fact that Education goes beyond knowledge and skill. Teachers form people who go out and live in societies and participate in institutions in the future. They also form people who have to live in any society today. Perhaps this is obvious, perhaps this is the most egregious of straw men and in fact, both “sides” of the debate take this seriously.

There needs to be a purpose to education that goes beyond *merely* learning knowledge. Discipline and good behavior are not just "for the sake of knowledge” they are for the sake of developing self-control and becoming more human. We discipline for the sake of self-discipline. As we strive to participate alongside others in society, we see society rewarding the honesty and compassion that appropriate, compassionate discipline supports. Humans have a desire to avoid negative consequences and obtain social support. Becoming used to social support lent by stability, warmth, comfort leads to the decision to seek out behaviors that bring that, for the sake of it. As much as people might argue it does, I do still believe that the best route to success is with truth, integrity, vulnerability and listening. This only happens when people feel safe enough to be vulnerable. This is why maintaining and safe and supportive school is so important.

Selflessness flourishes in disciplined schools in which doing the wrong thing is not rewarded. The evidence on this is pretty clear, compassion and putting others first leads to wellbeing. Discipline is the beginning of a process of becoming a happier, flourishing individual.

Anyone who wants to spend 10 minutes with my charming 4-year-old will know that, wonderful as she is, she’s a rationally self-interested being. There is nothing wrong with that. What I want her to learn is that it is *in her interest* to be more selfless. Sounds like a paradox, but it is by putting ourselves second that we develop strong relationships with others, gain trust and achieve our goals. I don’t want her to go to a school that encourages her to put herself first by trying to bend to her every whim in a forlorn attempt to meet her needs. Ultimately, the teacher is the trusted adult with a mature ethical framework (*exceptions apply*, but they are rare) so I trust them to know when my kid is making mistakes and I expect them to support me in letting her know what's cool and what's not. We are forming people, whether we like it or not!

I am not talking about anything crazy here. I just mean we should emphasize treating people kindly, telling the truth, being compassionate, being responsible, listening to others and then be highly consistent in our promotion of the conditions under which these values flourish. This is discipline for me, it's intermeshed with culture.  I've worked in three different countries and I can tell you these values are not culturally relative or determined.

Don’t worry, this isn’t an attempt to sneak in soft skills through the back door of discipline. The “soft-skills” movement wants a communication rubric including gradations of “how to look into someone’s eyes when they are talking to you” or “how to have open and friendly body language” regardless of the circumstances. Doing this a few times to a teacher in a classroom doesn't mean you now have the transferrable skill of communication. That’s misguided. People generally *can* be quite good communicators if they are happy and satisfied with the conversation they are having, or if they have developed the self-control to place their own needs and desires below the person they are talking to. This is much more about self-control that knowing what a good communicator *does*.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we are obedient even when something is heinously unfair or someone is being an ass. Cases when the kid really has been treated unfairly are pretty rare and unscrupulous, cantankerous teachers, whilst not unknown, are at least not the norm. Most schools have pretty reasonable rules about being respectful, working hard and treating people kindly. If you think that is oppressively forcing people to “play the game” of the dominant class just consider what the consequences of allowing students to refuse the game are. You are not being kind by lowering your expectations for behavior, you are perpetuating inequality and potentially allowing childish petulance to do real damage to future prospects.

Even when you do get a grumpy teacher who doesn’t spend their time trying to make you like them, this is a wonderful opportunity to learn and develop the self-mastery that will help you in the multiple other times in your life when you'll deal with cantankerous or unreasonable folk (twitter anyone?). If the lessons from successful non-violent protests are anything to go by, we must understand that if you *do* decide to do some “good misbehavior” and break some rules, you must risk the consequences. The kid in the anecdote who snuck out to fight Nazis was courageous and ethical because he knew that something might happen if he did the right but disobedient thing. He had skin in the game. Importantly, if my daughter is being mistreated or abused I expect her to tell me. I expect her to stand up for herself. I cannot teach her this through a general rejection of obedience and norm adherence. She needs to know what normal obedience and human interaction are like in order to be able to recognise deviance. If she thought it was her right to speak out and be rebellious on issues of timeliness, uniform or general messing about, she'll develop that habit. Teachers won't trust her even if they might misguidedly try to find out "what's going on" with her. 

Some saccharine educators, often with #passionate #educator #hacklearning in their bio, will criticize people for being “negative”. Despite this, they claim to be pro-justice. Being positive about everything is almost as bad as blind obedience to everything. Logically, they are pretty closely related. Teachers are expected to be positive and never criticise their Edu-guru overlords and of course always be positive about kids because if not, that's the "deficit" mindset right there. Okay, if you complain all the time people will rightly stop listening to you but if you agree all the time people will stop trying to convince you. In order to stand up for something, there needs to be something to stand up against. It's not really a fight for justice if your opponent lies down and asks how they can meet your needs.

If you take the view that discipline and being a good person is an expression of the dominant (white/rich/male) social class and so seek to liberate students from the requisites of these oppressive parameters you are not teaching social justice or activism, you are teaching them that their own will to power will flourish in all circumstances. There will always be pushback in reality. Institutions don't change because you don't like them. This is why teaching children to act within the confines established by the democratic group, and not individual tyrants are important. The institutions and rules we establish as a society cannot be easily changed and our ethical struggles are important missions and not cakewalks. Reducing the fight for equal rights to the right to arse about does a serious injustice to serious social action.

Traditionalists unease with the idea of instilling and reinforcing universal human values like kindness, honesty and love is incompatible with the idea of instilling discipline. When someone is self-controlled, they are more disciplined. They don’t act on their immediate wants and desires. They “think about” their behaviour. As they do this they become more self-aware and learn to direct their rebellion to those things which require it. They build up their ethical sense. 

There is a mistake we could make by thinking that when people talk about wellbeing, we are talking about the satisfaction of desires; wellbeing is not about getting what you want. The simple truth is that if you always get what you want you will just. Want. More. We need to "keep our treats as treats". The ”me” generation are overindulged by teachers trying to meet student expectations instead of asking them to be compliant with reasonable rules. For me, this is one of the biggest failings of progressive education as currently conceived. When progressives talk about giving negative consequences to kids turning up without a pencil or falling asleep in class it’s considered to be a “deficit model”. It’s *mean* to do that the logic goes. The kid probably has an unmet need they are communicating. They have a tough home life or are fighting with their girlfriend or their dog died. 

This feeds into the idea of teachers as super-humans who must inspire every child in their charge by inspiring and motivating them. The deficit model – seeing kids behaviour as a result of their choices - is contrasted with seeing everything a kid does as the result of circumstances outside of their control. I’d challenge this, what could be more of a deficiency model than assuming a kid isn’t able to take responsibility for the small things in his life *despite* his personal circumstances? This sometimes leaks into self-appointed student-centred Edu guru types guilt-tripping teachers for holding kids accountable. Worse, they are blamed for poor behaviour and aggression. If you give homework it’s mean because some kids can’t do it at home. Whatever happened to, I believe in you kid, you can do it, you can find a way to meet my expectations and I will help! Let's not make the first move seeing what's wrong with the kids, this pathologises childhood. An anti-deficiency mindset is to assume there is no deficiency, have a stern chat with that kid and ensure they change. That’s true empowerment.

Weirdly, progressives sometimes invoke determinism to support their cause. Kids don’t have free will and agency so how can we hold them accountable? Talk about deficiency model again. But even on their own terms, this argument makes no sense. If we assume that kids, like adults, are driven by a whole range of unconscious drives, needs and positive and negative experiences then that’s even more reason to create a culture of high expectations and planned routines in which small misdemeanours are treated consistently. By creating circumstances under which it’s more difficult to do the wrong thing, we are, by definition, empowering students to use their limited agency on their learning.

You don't need to create such spellbinding learning experiences so that all students natural curiosity is stimulated and satiated through choice and agency. Unfortunately, educelebs, thought-gurus and inspirational educators who no longer work in schools support spurious attempts to “gamify” everything because, well if we could just dress up the content to make it more *authentic* and *relevant* all would be okay. This thinking has led to burnout, stress and a retention crisis. 

To give the gift of self-control and the peace that comes from this, we need to have clear rules and consequences when they are not fulfilled. There is a certain irony in traditionalists saying that they want good behaviour JUST to support learning. That’s rubbish. Yes, of course, good discipline will be good for the teacher and the child’s learning. Nobody learns well when Alan is making loud farting noises and Tanika is doing her nails. It’s distracting. However, by holding kids accountable and insisting on high standards of conduct we are also instilling a moral sense. We are instilling the idea that selfishness – whatever the kid wants at that moment – isn’t the most important thing in the situation. Here’s where I find the logic of some progressives frustrating. It’s like they believe that children’s natural curiosity will automatically go towards that which we, the adults, want. Of course, it won’t. What could be less immediately fascinating than Math and yet what contains more beauty than Math taught by skilled teachers?

Sorry traditionalists, as much as it might frustrate you, education has a moral purpose. You are building character and personality whether you like it or not! Early childhood books contain many implicit and explicit messages. It's not virtue signalling to promote kindness, truth and compassion. Almost certainly the person banging on about being nice to each other (in this case me) doesn't have a heinous ulterior motive and/or a shady set of personal morals but is probably just another person trying to do their best and failing frequently. You don't have to be perfect to promote the stern compassion and warm strictness that ultimately lead to wellbeing. A disciplined mind is a contented mind. Kids can meditate all day but if they use the improvements gained thereby attempting to aim their spitballs with a laser-like accuracy at the back of Barry’s bonce then it has probably been a waste of time.