Discipline is extremely important in student life

Discipline is extremely important in student life it’s the bridge between goals and achievements. It forms the core of virtues such as success, manners and honesty. Discipline lays the foundation for achieving better results, outshining in class and more importantly, gaining higher goals in life. Quite frankly discipline in modern day public schools is something we are clearly lacking. Back when our parents were younger discipline in schools was respected and standards of achievement were much higher. Nowadays students are getting away with too much therefore they think they can do whatever they want and what they’ll get a detention? A recent international study ranked New Zealand students among the worst-behaved in the world. Discipline not only affects success in terms of academic results but it readies people for life. Students leave school to join apprenticeships, go into the work place, attend high level institutions or even go on the benefit. There are rules everywhere outside school such as work times, clothing or safety requirements, social or interpersonal guidelines, compulsory interviews or exams. This is real life and we should be preparing students for this, clearly stating that later on in life there are going to be rules that they have to follow. Out in the real world you can’t just wear what you want, or say or do what you want, drive where you want to drive or be under the influence of alcohol, or hurt others. The consequences for these behaviours is losing your job, being excluded from your education or even worse, being fined or going to jail. If a child has never learnt how to react to discipline and rules, either at home or at school, these lessons will be tough and potentially life changing. Almost three-quarters of respondents in a Sunday Star-Times reader poll, said discipline was lacking in our schools, and blamed the rise in bad behavior on the loss of discipline at home and a lack of respect among young people. In olden day public schools before physical punishment was banned, children had a lot of r espect for their teachers and school rules. Their parents also had a a high level of respect for teachers and if they got into trouble at school they would almost certainly get into trouble at home. There was no tolerance for misbehaviour or laziness. I think that lessons were better learnt in the past because of physical punishment. Putting us into a room with nothing to do is useless because in a few hours we will forget what we did to deserve it. I can’t even remember if I got in trouble last week or what it was for. These days school discipline has changed. There are apology letter to teachers, one hundred lines, lecture, detention, getting suspended. But that is nothing, who is scared of a few hundred lines and writing a letter that is full of promises that you don’t mean? Half an hour in at lunch is not a big deal to us. I am not saying that I think old punishments were the best ways, they were actually terrible, what I am saying is that modern methods of punishments are not effective, they are easily avoided and do not make a lasting impression. Now I’m sure you all know that marijuana is illegal right? Yes well students all over New Zealand have easy access to this, so of course they’ll think its cool bringing it to school to share with their mates or whatever? So here the teachers are walking around school at lunch times knowing where the smoking spots are and they don’t do anything about it, in fact the worst they do is get them in for a drug test and if its positive then they’re suspended! In the real world these cases would be taken a lot further, the police would even be involved. These students think its okay? but its really not and teachers need to be re’enforcing rules to assure that us as students know the consequences and learn from our mistakes. So my point is that discipline in our public schools is really not acceptable, there are rules put in place for a reason and teachers need to be sticking to those rules, they need to put more effective lessons in to gear, ones that will actually teach us that what we did was wrong. I’m sure we all have got away with something that we should have been punished for, well I know I have.