"Tolerance is Found Within"

(This essay is based off of an essay, "Kinds of Discipline" written by John Holt. The page numbers reference to "Prose Models" 11th edition)

“Tolerance is Found Within”

As the modern world continues to bring a variety of nations together under one global economy, tolerance is becoming an issue that must be dealt with. To truly be tolerant of your fellow humans you must respect who they are, and how they developed to become that person. The largest factor in personal development is discipline, as described by John Holt in his essay, “Kinds of Discipline.” John Holt breaks discipline into three major categories: Discipline of Nature, Culture, and Superior Force. Holt then explains each kind of discipline and what role it plays in a child’s development. If you analyze the effects of these disciplines to more completely understand your personal development then you could learn to be more tolerant of others.

The first step to understanding your own development is to analyze the effects of the discipline of Nature, as described by Holt. Holt teaches us that the discipline of Nature is the first discipline we learn as children. We learn this discipline through experiments with nature. In his essay, Holt uses examples of a child stacking blocks, hitting the wrong key on a piano, and hammering a nail crooked, to illustrate how we learn simply by the nature of everything we interact with. Through this discipline we can learn what we perceive as ‘common sense.’ Common sense is the knowledge we assume the majority of persons share, without need of explanation. As children, we learn, when riding a bicycle, if we do not maintain momentum the bike will fall over. After the initial experience, an explanation of riding a bicycle is no longer necessary. Now, imagine two men, both 40 yrs old, one is your average American, the other is from a poverty-stricken nation. We assume the first man has ridden a bike as a child, and the latter of the two has not, due to his state of poverty. If the two men were asked to ride a bicycle across a board over an active volcano both would understand the dangers of the volcano because common sense tells them molten lava will kill them. However, we can assume that the first (the American) would have a better chance at succeeding because his common sense includes experience with the nature of bicycles, even if he hasn’t ridden a bike in many years. If the same men were asked to perform a task that only the second man had experience with as a child, the outcome would probably be in his favor. Though both men have common sense, what one man finds common is often new, and strange to another. If you explore how Holt’s discipline of Nature affected your personal development it will be easier to understand how a different society experiences Nature.

The second step to understanding your own development is to analyze the effects of the discipline of Culture (or Society), as described by Holt. Holt depicts this discipline as that of a child’s will to be a part of a group. Holt says, “Children who live surrounded by people who speak a certain way will speak that way, however much we may try to tell them that speaking that way is bad or wrong” (pg 136). How you interact socially as an adult is directly based on how you learned to interact as a child. In another essay, “Discipline- To What End?” by Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux, Mead and Metraux explain American’s as living “in a society in which many people are socially mobile and may live as adults in a social or cultural environment that is very different from the one in which they grew up.” This is not true for every culture. In many nations around the world people are taught to avoid change, and strangeness, at all cost. With the knowledge of how the discipline of Culture varies throughout the world, you can learn to be tolerant, and patient, of those who do not immediately accept your customs or beliefs.

The third step to understanding your own development is to analyze the effects of the discipline of Superior Force. As described by John Holt, Superior Force is the discipline where consequences are given to an action where a child wouldn’t normally understand the natural consequences. This discipline is also known as, parenting. As long as there are parents involved in a child’s development, this discipline will be used. According to Holt, “(Superior Force) is the one most people mean when they speak of discipline” (pg 136). Although Holt doesn’t approve of this discipline being used often, he says, “we can’t afford to let a small child find out the dangers of playing in a busy street…he can have no idea of what it would be like to be hit by a car, but he can imagine being shouted at, or spanked, or sent to his room” (pg 136). Though this force is used often, it should only be used until the child understands the natural consequences. Holt uses an example of young children in Mexico walking along the street safely because they understood the dangers of the passing cars. The discipline of Superior Force has the greatest influence in how a person interacts with others. It forces a child to trust the knowledge of an adult. The less often this discipline is used, the more a child will develop the courage, and desire, to explore their world as adults. If used too often a child will grow to be an adult who is weary of new and strange things. Many cultures use different degrees of this discipline, some more strict and some less. If you know how this discipline affected your personal development it will be easier to understand why people from different cultures accept life changes differently from one another.

After analyzing your personal development you will begin to understand how everyone is, in fact, unique. Experiment with your friends and family. Ask them about where and how they were raised, and what effects Nature, Culture, and Superior Force had on their childhood. You’ll be surprised to find that quirks you’ve noticed in their character begin to have reason. It could even enhance the friendship that holds you together. Try exploring this concept with someone who is merely an acquaintance and possibly make a new friend. If everyone makes the extra effort it takes to understand each other a little better, perhaps the events that took place on Sept 11th could be the last of their kind?