A Lesson in Discipline

At the intersection of teaching and learning

The Storyteller by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, c. 1773 (public domain - Blanton Museum of Art,  The Suida-Manning Collection)

“But you don’t acquire self-discipline if you never learn what discipline is: neither can life’s problems be worked out without experience which can be secured only through hard knocks or by guidance from the experience of others.” —  J. Edgar Hoover, 1943

The scene is a high school classroom in a small Connecticut town. The room is on the second floor, just around the corner from the stairwell.

We’re slightly winded after rushing up from the cafeteria on the first floor, where we lingered longer than we should have over cold tater tots and lukewarm gossip.

As we shuffle to our seats and reluctantly take out our notebooks, Mrs. Kinney, who has been arranging papers on her desk, stands up with an air of authoritative efficiency and greets us just as she did every day:

“Salvete, discipuli.”

We respond only as we were instructed to answer:

“Salve, magistra.”

Thus began Latin class every day of the week at the beginning of my junior year — but it wouldn’t last.

Not because Mrs. Kinney gave up on this time-honored tradition. It only occurred at the beginning of my junior year because I wouldn’t make it through the entire year in Latin class five days a week.

And it’s related to that greeting.

Discipculi is the plural of discipulus, the Latin word for pupil or student. It is also the root of the word discipline. And oh, the discipline I needed in that class…