Building Discipline in Students of High Schools in Surakarta Regency, Indonesia: A Child-Right Perspective

Abstract

This article aims at exploring the teachers perspectives on the approach to building discipline in students at schools in Surakarta, how they understand the concept of positive discipline, how disciplines are built at their school viewed from child right perspective, and types of punishment imposed by the schools. The participants were 22 teachers and 5 students from 15 schools in Surakarta. The data were collected through questionnaires and interview and were analyzed inductively. The findings show that all teachers perceive that to build discipline in students, teachers and school should have a clear school rules with some punishment. For the students who break the rules, there should be punishment which should 1) shape their good character, 2) make students responsible, 3) not be in the form of physical punishment, 4) be proportional, 5) be aimed to give them sanction/consequences of their fault, 6) make students learn from the mistakes, and 7) give deferrant effect. According to them, the positive discipline: 1) shapes good character of students, 2, gives reward and punishment, 3) gives positive effect, and 4) gives punitive effect. To build disciplines, their schools impose school rules for students including the sanctions for those disobeying the rules. For teachers and schools, the discipline building is for the sake of students to be better, however, the emphasis is on the importance of its punitive effect not on the communication to build awareness about the consequences of their misbehavior.