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Obedience and Discipline

 

An impious question comes up: Why should a child obey? My answer is: He must obey to satisfy the adult’s desire for power. Otherwise, why should a child obey?

 

“Well,” you say, “he may get his feet wet if he disobeys the command to put on shoes; he may even fall over the cliff if he disobeys his father’s shout.” Yes, of course, the child should obey when it is a matter of life and death. But how often is a child punished for disobeying in matters of life and death? Seldom, if ever! He is generally hugged with a “My precious! Thank God, you’re safe!” It is for small things that a child is usually punished.

 

Now it is possible to run a home where obedience is not required. If I say to a child, “Get your books and take a lesson in English,” he may refuse if he is not interested in English. His disobedience merely expresses his own desires, which obviously do not intrude on or hurt anyone else. But if I say, “The center part of the garden is planted; no one is to run over it!” all the children accept what I say in much the same way that they accept Derrick’s command, “Nobody is to use my ball unless they ask me first.” For obedience should be a matter of give and take. Occasionally, at Summerhill, there is disobedience of a law passed in the General School Meeting. Then the children may themselves take action. However, in the main, Summerhill runs along without any authority or any obedience. Each individual is free to do what he likes as long as he is not trespassing on the freedom of others. And this is a realizable aim in any community.

 

Under self-regulation, there is no authority in the home. This means that there is no loud voice that declaims, “I say it! You must obey.” In actual practice there is, of course, authority. Such authority might be called protection, care, and adult responsibility. Such authority sometimes demands obedience but at other times gives obedience. Thus I can say to my daughter, “You can’t bring that mud and water into our parlor.” That’s no more than her saying to me, “Get out of my room, Daddy. I don’t want you here now,” a wish that I, of course, obey without a word.

 

Akin to punishment is the parental demand that a child should not bite off more than it can chew. Literally--for often a child’s eye is bigger than his stomach and he will demand a plateful that he cannot consume. To force a child to finish what is on his plate is wrong. Good parenthood is the power of identifying oneself with a child, understanding his motives, realizing his limitations, without harboring ulterior motives or resentment.

 

One mother wrote me that she wanted her daughter to obey her. I was teaching her daughter to obey herself. The mother finds her disobedient, but I find her always obedient. Five minutes ago, she came into my room to argue about dogs and their training. “Buzz off,” I said, “I’m busy writing.” And she went out--without a word.

 

Obedience should be social courtesy. Adults should have no right to the obedience of children. It must come from within-- not be imposed from without.



 

Discipline is a means to an end. The discipline of an army is aimed at making for efficiency in fighting. All such discipline subordinates the individual to the cause. In disciplined countries life is cheap.

 

There is, however, another discipline. In an orchestra, the first violinist obeys the conductor because he is as keen on a good performance as the conductor is. The private who jumps to attention does not, as a rule, care about the efficiency of the army. Every army is ruled mostly by fear, and the soldier knows that if he disobeys he will be punished. School discipline can be of the orchestra type when teachers are good. Too often it is of the army type. The same applies to the home. A happy home is like an orchestra and enjoys the same kind of team spirit. A miserable home is like a barracks that is ruled by hate and discipline.

 

The odd thing is that homes with team-spirit discipline often tolerate a school with army discipline. Boys are beaten by teachers - boys who are never beaten at home. A visitor from an older and wiser planet would consider the parents of this country, morons if he were told that in some elementary schools, even today, small children are punished for mistakes in addition or in spelling. When humane parents protest against the beating discipline of the school and go to court about it, in most cases the law takes the side of the punishing teacher.

 

Parents could abolish corporal punishment tomorrow--if they wanted to. Apparently the majority do not want to. The system suits them. It disciplines their boys and girls. The hate of the child is cleverly directed to the punishing teacher and not to the parents who hire him to do the dirty work. The system suits these parents because they themselves were never allowed to live and love. They, too, were made slaves to group discipline, and the poor souls cannot visualize freedom.

 

It is true that there must be some discipline in the home. Generally, it is the type of discipline that safeguards the individual rights of each member of the family. For example, I do not allow my daughter, Zoe to play with my typewriter. But in a happy family this kind of discipline usually looks after itself. Life is a pleasant give and take. Parents and children are chums, co-workers.

 

In the unhappy home, discipline is used as a weapon of hate, and obedience becomes a virtue. Children are chattels, things owned, and they must be a credit to their owners. I find that the parent who worries most about Billy’s learning to read and write is one who feels a failure in life because of lack of educational attainment.

 

It is the self-disapproving parent who believes in strict discipline. The jovial man-about-town with a stock of obscene stories will sternly reprove his son for talking about excrement. The untruthful mother will spank her child for lying. I have seen a man, with pipe in mouth, whipping his son for smoking. I have heard a man say as he hit his son of twelve, “I’ll teach you to swear, you little bastard.” When I remonstrated, he said glibly, “It’s different when I curse. He’s just a kid.”

 

Strict discipline in the home is always a projection of self-hate. The adult has striven for perfection in his own life, has failed miserably to reach it, and now attempts to find it in his children. And all because he cannot love. All because he fears pleasure as the very devil. That, of course, is why man invented the Devil-- the fellow who has all the best times, who loves life and joy and sex. The aim of perfection is to conquer the Devil. And from this aim derive mysticism and irrationalism, religion and asceticism. From this derives, too, the crucifixion of the flesh in the form of beating and sexual abstinence and impotency.

 

It might justly be said that strict home discipline aims at castration in its widest sense, castration of life itself. No obedient child can ever become a free man or woman. No child punished for masturbation can ever be fully orgastically potent.

 

I have said that the parent wants the child to become what he or she has failed to become. There is more to it than that: every repressed parent is at the same time determined that his child shall not get more out of life than he, the parent, got. Unalive parents won’t allow children to be alive. And such a parent always has an exaggerated fear of the future. Discipline, he thinks, will save his children. This same lack of confidence in his inner self makes him postulate an outside God who will compel goodness and truth. Discipline is thus a branch of religion.

 

The main difference between Summerhill and the typical school is that at Summerhill we have faith in the child’s personality. We know that if Tommy wants to be a doctor, he will voluntarily study to pass the entrance examinations. The disciplined school is sure that Tommy will never be a doctor unless he is beaten or pressured or forced to study at prescribed hours.

 

I grant that in most cases it is easier to eliminate discipline from the school than from the home. In Summerhill, when a child of seven makes himself a social nuisance, the whole community expresses its disapproval. Since social approval is something that everyone desires the child learns to behave well. No discipline is necessary.

 

In the home, where so many emotional factors and other circumstances enter, things are not so easy. The harassed housewife, cooking the dinner, cannot treat her fractious child with social disapproval. Nor can the tired father when he finds his new seedbed trampled upon. What I wish to emphasize is that in a home where the child has had self-regulation from the start, ordinary demands for discipline do not arise!

 

Some years ago, I visited my friend Wilhelm Reich in Maine. His son, Peter, was three years old. The lake at the doorstep was deep. Reich and his wife simply told Peter that he should not go near the water. Having had no hateful training and therefore having trust in his parents, Peter did not go near the water. The parents knew that they need not worry. Parents who discipline with fear and authority would have lived on that lakeshore with their nerves on edge. Children are so accustomed to being lied to that when mother says that water is dangerous, they simply don’t believe her. They have a defiant wish to go to the water.

 

The disciplined child will express his hate of authority by annoying his parents. Indeed, much childish misbehavior is a visible proof of wrong treatment. The average child accepts the parental voice of knowledge - if there is love in the home. If there is hate in the home, he accepts nothing. Or he accepts things negatively: he is destructive and insolent and dishonest.

 

Children are wise. They will react to love with love, and will react to hate with hate. They will respond easily to discipline of the team type. I aver that badness is not basic in human nature any more than it is basic in rabbit nature or lion nature. Chain a dog and a good dog becomes a bad dog. Discipline a child and a good social child becomes a bad, insincere hater. Sad to say, most people are sure that a bad boy wants to be bad; they believe that with the help of God or a big stick, the child has the power of choosing to be good. And if he refuses to exercise this power, then they’ll damn well see to it that he suffers for his contumaciousness.

 

In a way, the old school spirit symbolizes all that discipline stands for. The principal of a large boys’ school said to me not long ago when I asked him what sort of boys he had, “The sort that goes out with neither ideas nor ideals. They would join up as cannon fodder in any war, never stopping to consider what the war was about and why they were fighting.”

 

I haven’t hit a child for nearly forty years. Yet as a young teacher, I used the strap vigorously without ever stopping to think about it. I never beat a child now because I have become aware of the dangers in beating and I am quite aware of the hate behind the beating.

 

At Summerhill we treat children as equals. By and large, we respect the individuality and personality of a child just as we would respect the individuality and personality of an adult, knowing that the child is different from an adult. We adults do not demand that adult Uncle Bill must clear his plate when he dislikes carrots, or that father must wash his hands before he sits down to a meal. By continually correcting children, we make them feel inferior. We injure their natural dignity. It is all a question of relative values. In heaven’s name, what does it really matter if Tommy sits down to a meal with unwashed hands!

 

Children brought up under the wrong type of discipline live one lifelong lie. They never dare be themselves. They become slaves to established futile customs and manners. They accept their silly Sunday clothes without question. For the mainspring of discipline is fear of censure. Punishment from their playfellows does not involve fear. But when an adult punishes, fear comes automatically. For the adult is big and strong and awe-inspiring. Most important of all, he is a symbol of the feared father or feared mother.

 

For thirty-eight years, I have seen nasty, cheeky, hateful children come to the freedom of Summerhill. In every case, a gradual change took place. In time, these spoiled children have become happy, social, sincere, and friendly children.

 

The future of humanity rests with the new parents. If they ruin the life force in their children by arbitrary authority, crime and war and misery will go on flourishing. If they carry on in the footsteps of their disciplinary parents, they will lose the love of their children. For no one can love what he fears.

 

Neurosis begins with parental discipline--which is the very opposite of parental love. You cannot have a good humanity by treating it with hate and punishment and suppression. The only way is the way of love.

 

A loving environment, without parental discipline, will take care of most of the troubles of childhood. This is what I want parents to realize. If their children are given an environment of love and approval in the home, nastiness, hate, and destructiveness will never arise.

 


Date: 2015-12-11; view: 791


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