Gazi Md. Abdur Rashid :
Education is a process of socialization, it prepares the child for social living and reforms the attitudes wrongly formed by children already. It teaches them the values of discipline, social cooperation, tolerance and sacrifice. It encourages the individual qualities of honesty, fairness, sense of right and wrong. It gives him the ability to succeed in his struggle for existence. The child learns to respect the opinion and advice of others; hence education is a necessary condition for the proper exercise of social control.
Education in modern times is a very powerful means of social discipline. It prepares the child for social living and teaches him the values of discipline, cooperation, tolerance and integration. Educational institutions at all levels (i.e. school, college, madrasa, university, etc.) impart knowledge as well as ethics through formal structured courses and behavioral inputs. The child learns many things from the Education institutions, which he cannot learn from other sources. It is education, which makes all efforts to discipline the mind of the student in the school so that he can realize the importance of social discipline.
Social discipline is a strong psychological theory that incorporates meeting expectations, social persuasion and accountability to individual responsibilities to encourage adherence to commitments. The driving force of Social Discipline involves making loyal promises to deliver on one’s commitments in a public setting.
Discipline basically means performing an action in accordance to a prescribed set of rules and regulations. Rules and regulations are basically formed to bring harmony in social life. As human beings live with other humans in a society, therefore, they cannot do whatever they want. They have to keep in consideration that their actions do not harm others in any way. Moreover, they have to make sure that their rights are well protected and their responsibilities are well performed. So, there are rules and regulations within a society to make humans gain maximum from the fruits of social life.
What is the nature of rules and regulations that prevail in a society and what are their characteristics is a different issue but discipline is basically related to how those rules are followed. Sometimes, a disciplined behavior may also lead to inappropriate outcomes as the nature of the rules and regulations may be deficient. Nonetheless, with the proper evolution of the rules and regulations the deficiencies may be minimized.
In order to make sure that within a social discipline is maintained and the rules and regulations are properly inculcated within the society members, most of the societies of the world have developed strong systems. Through these systems, they make sure that the society members properly understand the prevailing rules and their importance. Moreover, through the systems, it is ascertained that the society members are encouraged to follow the rules and they are discouraged whenever they go astray.
In the civilized world, the civic sense is really very much mature. Through different institutions wherein the society members are nourished, they are made aware of their roles and responsibilities. It is not that the society members are perfect embodiments of civilized beings, but they to a large extent are obedient. The disturbances that are the result of the violation of the rules and regulations are also minimized by such systems. The violation of rules and regulations may give rise to so many social evils – the evils like crimes. The, otherwise, normal course of social life is highly disturbed. Both the violators and sufferers of the violation of the rules and regulations, if left without proper attention, are likely to think of the crimes and corruption. There is basically an unbroken chain of evils that follow each other and at the end become too gigantic to be controlled easily. Therefore, they have to be controlled from the very beginning.
The undeveloped countries of the world do not have strong systems to ensure discipline. The inhabitants of the society are more concerned to other matters rather than discipline. Moreover, the institutions are not strong enough to ensure that the individuals are provided with civic sense. From a very minor issue to a major one, the ill-discipline can be observed within all types of people, without any discrimination. Even the most influential people in this regard do not show very responsible approach. Therefore, the instances of ill-discipline can be observed even in most of the important institutions of the country.
Apart from that just observe the daily life and you may find many examples of violation of rules and regulations. Just observe the traffic on the roads. The way the drivers drive the cars on the roads is in no way disciplined. There is no concurrence on and observance of the traffic rules. Even the traffic constables and their signs are neglected and the result to all such carelessness is a traffic jam.
Another clear violation of rules and regulations can easily be observed in different queues that have to wait in front of bus stations. Most of the people try, in some way or the other, to reach to the front of the row and get their ticket instead of waiting in the line. On the other hand, the influential people – the people with wealth and status – do not have to get in any type of queue or line to get their works done. In fact, they are above all the rules and they do not have to follow any of them.
Such clear violation of rules and regulations has a very negative impact on the society as a whole and would never help the society move towards a civilized life. Every society needs to have discipline, harmony and peace so as to solve other major issues in the country. Therefore, its inhabitants, especially the influential and authoritative people have to display the discipline through their actions so that other people should be disciplined, as well.
All the social beings, in their individual lives and in the social ones, have to follow discipline if they want to prove that human beings have become really civilized. Discipline, as some of the people believe, does not necessarily enslave human beings within the bounds of rules and regulations and snatch their freedom. It, in fact, emancipates them from violating the rights of others and makes them practice their freedom in a responsible manner. Freedom does not mean doing whatever an individual pleases to do; rather, it is making the best choice from amongst the available choices, and discipline facilitates them in doing so.
(Gazi Md. Abdur Rashid, Research Officer, District Education Office, Secondary and Higher Education, Munshiganj)
