Disciplining: From Corporal Punishment to Full-body Segregation. Comments on “Strict Discipline” by William F. Pinar

The text written by William Pinar on “strict discipline” raises issues that can be uncomfortable and yet will benefit most from leaving the closet behind. Pinar here emphasizes the vulnerability of young learners, behavioral norms under continuous pressure as schooling rises in importance for life chances, the power of masters, and the tensions of guiding and disciplining children and adolescents as they orient themselves morally in their own cohorts and in contrast to their elders. His concept of Currere, or the running of the course and the lived experiences of curriculum that constitute a person’s education (see Pinar 2011), underscores the significance of subjectivity, individuality, indeed: developmental distinctive-ness. Pupils’ innocence and their blossoming on the path to adulthood as well as the close contact required in interactive learning processes inherently provide moments of fondness and aversion—and sometimes even passion. The latter have become verboten in an age shocked by innumerable cases of sexual abuse in family, ecclesiastical, and pedagogic settings, and sensitive about the lifelong damage often caused by such acts. There are also costs to ignoring the potential and the need for understanding and intimacy in learning processes, whether intergenerational or among diverse peers.