Discipline is teaching the students about social rules and telling them how to behave properly in certain situations through shaping their behaviors. On the other hand, punishment is just punishing them after they misbehaved, and this doesn’t necessarily teach them what is the desired and acceptable behavior. The biggest different between discipline and punishment is that discipline teaches students to have control over their behaviors, in other words, to have internal motivation to act good. Punishment only teaches students not to do certain behaviors in order not to get punished. Therefore, in this view, discipline does seem to be a more sufficient and meaningful way to teach students about social rules.
However, there are times when punishment may seem to be more effective. For example, if a student keeps misbehaving no matter what the teacher tells him, then maybe giving him a punishment would work better than to teach him social rules slowly. I think it all depends on the situation. If a student is unbelievably misbehaving, then punishment is necessary for stopping this behavior. Although punishment may sound a bit harsh but that’s how children learn. They learn through mistakes, and if they don’t experience any consequences for these mistakes, they probably won’t be able to learn.
Anyway, I think it is the best way to teach students about seld-control through shaping their behaviors. But it doesn’t mean we should abandon punishment. Punishment has it’s function in terms of shaping students’ behavior. Teachers need to observe a situation carefully and think deeply before deciding if they are going to use discipline or punishment in dealing with a student’s misbehavior.
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