Discipline is Teaching

Discipline is Teaching

In a French drama film, The Class is from the semi-auto-graphical novel by a French actor/writer and the former teacher Francois Begaudeau. This film is about the young teacher who works in a multi-racial area. He has high hopes to his students, and tries to educate them to become better individuals for their futures. The scene in which some of the teachers and parents’ representatives are discussing about punishments for students demonstrates the power struggle between teachers and students. My own experience from elementary to high school, however, completely contrasts from what teachers were going though in this particular scene. When I was going to school in Japan, our teachers used corporal punishments when students misbehaved, and it was almost mutual agreement that the corporal punishment was the part of Japanese education.
In this film, French schools are shown to lenient discipline system. Teachers don’t seem to handle troubled students by themselves. They would want someone else to decide how to handle troubled students. For example, one of the teachers explains that punishment had no effects on students, so they came up with the idea of a penalty system like driver’s license. Taking points from students’ performance doesn’t teach students anything. Students must learn to become better individuals from the disciplines. These French teachers might have been more enthusiastic about teaching these problem students; however, after years of struggling with them, they must have lost their spirits, and gave up on disciplining students.
In contrast, my own experience at school in Japan, Japanese teachers seemed to have firm philosophy of disciplines. They did not tolerant any disrespectful behaviors from students. They’d use the physical punishment to discipline their student if necessary. For example, when I was in my 3rd grade, I skipped my class and hung out with my friends at school backyard. My teacher caught us, and he smacked our bottoms with his plastic baseball bat! It hurt me terribly, and I couldn't sit on the chair rest of the day and slept on my stomach that night. That was the last time I skipped my class. I feared for my teacher; therefore, I wouldn't want to do anything to get punished like that anymore. When I was growing up, corporal punishment was commonly found in most Japanese schools; therefore, the discipline was somewhat I’d expected to happen if I misbehaved.
In conclusion, it was very interesting to see how Mr. Marin acted around his students in this film. His students don’t have respect for him because he doesn't have any dignity. His class would have been so much easier to handle if he had a solid discipline system in his class. I don’t believe in corporal punishment like I experienced as a child, however I do believe in discipline to teach children to behave. As teaching language, math, and history, discipline is also an important part of education, and it teaches students to become responsible individuals.