Discipline : An error in the society?

 

Just the other day, I was wondering about the concept of discipline in the society. And being one of those, who has just finished his summer internship in a company which cuts off your salary by more than half as punishment for being late, I have to confess, I was a bit surprised seeing the way people reacted to something as basic as discipline.

Time and Again, it is taught to us how important Discipline is for betterment of us and for the Society. So much so that some of the knowledge-worthy even stress on the fact that success and Discipline always go hand in hand.

A look around will show that Discipline is all around us. Right from the time tables of School, the working hours in office, to even the time slots on Television. Discipline is almost synonymous to a life-Style. Knowingly or unknowingly, we have all been steel-welded with time. Some say the best known way to tame time is to be Disciplined.

Discipline is not just confined to time. It even emerges in life as Codes of conduct, Rules and many others.

Now a question arises, Is discipline actually necessary in life? Do we HAVE to follow a time frame 24X7 to be happy and be successful? To find the answer we have to look right into the basic reason why we are 'trained' to be disciplined.

Right from the time when a baby can barely walk, certain rules are laid in front of him. 'Don't touch that, Don't do that, Sit straight, Don't make any noise while eating' are some of the very normal things which a parent would tell his child when he is growing up. We have to understand that some of these rules ARE important as being an infant, a baby is not supposed to know what is right and what is wrong. But telling a baby not to do things without telling him 'why' is something which can have a telling effect on him. After all, if a baby is always told not to go to places he doesn't know about, will inhibit the only quality a baby has as an infant: Exploring. Also, if the reasons are given as to 'why he is not supposed to do this', then in a way, we are simply pushing the child towards blind faith.

School is where a child is taught about the world. It is exploration at its next level for them. It has to be understood why the Time table is laid for the children. Why they are made to wear the same uniform and why they are made to stand together in an assembly. After all, like in some countries, the prayers can also be done in the classes. The reason is simple. Same uniform for school teaches them that everyone with them in the school is equal. No matter which caste, creed, religion they belong to, they are born equal. The same reason applies for the Birthday-boy wearing a coloured dress in school. Because it is a special day for him. And the school tries to make him feel special on that day. The assembly lines are again a sign of equality. Prayers ending with the National Anthem are for making the children feel proud to be citizens of India TOGETHER. Everyone is made to sing together for the same reason.

Now the tricky part is the Time-Table which is followed. Right Since childhood, we are taught to follow a time-frame which is emulated even in the official level with specific working hours in most of the companies. But some do not realize that while the working hours are important, coming to the office late or early, hardly makes any difference to the quality of work which is done. Some might argue that right form the school level, we are taught to be on time and hence, we should continue it, but they do not realize that time tables are not for teaching the children the value of time! It is for the sole reason that having so many classes to be taught by a specific no. of people, time slots HAVE to be decided so as to avoid chaos! And children are asked to come to be present in the class before the teacher so that they do not miss anything while they are not present in the class. But yes, teaching the value of time to the children is done by punishing the late-comers. Some teachers do not understand the sole reason of punishing the late comers and they make the child miss the whole class if they are late!

Post school, Even colleges have the system of making the mistake of 'making' the students 'attend' classes by making 75% attendance necessary. They do not realize that in a college a student should be allowed to explore the answers rather that being given long lectures by a teacher who just reads out from the book. One should realize that you never learn from Discourses, U learn from Discussions. Unless u discuss the things being taught, make the students 'think' about the topic, the student doesn't learn anything. The time table system, similar to the school has the same rules. The only Difference is they become more Rigid and students are reduced to Pseudo-Zombies, with most of them sitting in the seats with their mind somewhere else while the back benchers just merge the class-hours with their sleeping hours.

Discipline, as it seems, is just reduced to the 75% attendance, which most comply to with reluctance.

Now the most illogical part (now that I have experienced it), is the discipline in Office. Most of the companies that work projects should realize that their priority is completing the project at hand, rather than seeing which employee is 5 mins late and who is more 'disciplined'. As should be, all the employees have a work assigned to them and they have a deadline to complete it. Irrespective of the quality of work done by the employee, the more 'disciplined' one is given more preference than the other one (as I said, In most companies.)

The foundations of the life-style we are leading were based on certain rules and principles. While on the way, the reasons for the rules were forgotten and what remained was rules which a layman can't make head or tail of.

As is commonly said, "Common sense is not so common anymore."