About Discipline

 

Basically I don’t like discipline, but I don’t like disorder more than discipline. As I explained, Ghana is a completely different world and people are still breathing in the forest of fairy tale in terms of value of time, which is a paradise for me. I hold the ultimate philosophical argument if Development of Country is good or bad; suppose that we seek for well-developed country in future. But if I imagine Ghana 100 years later, I vaguely see people still playing with fairies, because development doesn’t happen automatically but it is something that you build up with proper spirits, values and virtues of people. So we have to start now to construct the better Ghana 100 years later.

When I started working at the school, I was really surprised by the fact of “laziness”. Many students didn’t really care about being late; some students didn’t bring pen and notebook; and some were not in the classroom during class time, going to eat, loaming around somewhere in the campus, and sleeping in dormitories even if there was housemothers there etc. And students were not aware of time at all, so it was like a chaos to me. But this situation was not lazy but normal in Ghana, oops at least in my school. Therefore I thought that my first job was to give them discipline in my class.

At the beginning of my class I take attendance to count the number of late, which Ghanaian teachers don’t do. I have to teach students punctuality. And when students come to the computer lab, they’re subjected to the dress code: if students come with sandals, I don’t allow them to enter and force them to change them; if they don’t wear school uniform properly, they can’t enter my class; and if they repeat bad behaviors, like cheating, stealing, absence without permission etc., and never show me their will to change, I sometimes kick them out from my class during the rest of the term. I don’t like scolding as such, but without discipline there is no difference between people and animals. How could animals build the better Ghana in future? And students are supposed to clean the lab but if they don’t do it they can use computers. They should learn rules to survive in society. Anyway as a result of this, naturally some students disobeyed me, disliked me and started avoiding me and my class. While no other Ghanaian teacher gives them discipline at all, Daigo always screams and shouts on discipline, but I believe that this is my contribution to Ghana. I’ve shown the right way to behave as a social person to my students since I came here and now the situation has changed.  

The school is maintained by not only school staff but students; there are several prefects to control over the school and dormitory life. At the beginning of the 3^rd term, the students’ administration changed from JHS-3 to JHS-2, and surprisingly enough the new school leader, Aknosi Kwabena, has started discipline with the hands of JHS-2. I’ve been repeatedly talking about the importance of discipline to colleagues and headmistresses but while they say that it is necessary and we should do it, nothing has happened from teachers’ side and they accuse students without giving discipline, rather they always show them bad examples of behavior. I’ve understood that adults are hopeless. However it occurred from students, I am very happy with it. My struggle with students in the last 1 year and half has got the return in the form of “self-discipline” unexpectedly. That’s a small step for the school, but it would be a giant leap for the Ghana 100 years later. 100 years ago in Japan, after the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese government sent a lot of students to Europe in order to acquire the essence of modernization. And the statement of a student is recorded: “If I rest one day, Japan delays one day”. This is the spirit of Japan. Future is built up by small acts of people living today.