Outline: Discipline: essential features of teaching – difficult to judge if a person will be able to keep a discipline in a class – room – difficult to keep discipline when a class is bored – adequate preparation for a teacher – great scholarship is useful to maintain discipline – qualities of a good teacher.
Discipline is an essential feature of teaching. Teaching can never be successful unless there is order and discipline in the classroom. Even the most learned teacher cannot teach without the help of discipline. It is difficult to say how exactly discipline should be maintained in a classroom. There are no hard and fast rules to be observed in maintaining discipline. Maintaining discipline is an art which comes naturally to some and is painfully mastered by others.
It is not easy to judge by appearances whether a person will be able to keep discipline in a classroom. A teacher who appears to have physical strength and al the manly virtues may find himself completely unsuccessful in maintaining discipline in a classroom. On the other hand, a puny, timid girl may be completely successful in managing a class.
Discipline is difficult to maintain when a class is bored. A teacher must do his/her lesson interesting. He/she can think of novel ways of presenting his/her subject, like the French master who had invented a kind of game of cricket to teach irregular verbs. Adequate preparation is also one of the means of creating interest and maintaining discipline. A teacher who is industrious himself/herself can make his/her class work hard. Students like a teacher who can make them work hard.
Great scholarship is unnecessary in order to keep discipline. A teacher who has learnt less but has better understanding of students’ difficulties can keep better discipline. Scholarships and lofty qualifications can, in fact, sometimes be an obstacle to understanding students’ difficulties and sympathizing with them.
Students always co-operate with a teacher who knows how to handle them. A teacher must be neither too severe nor too soft or sentimental in his/her approach to them. He needs to have a genuine liking for them and to be honest, industrious, cheerful and patient, if he/she wants to maintain discipline and be a successful teacher.