The most important lesson you can teach a school going child is that being disciplined is the foundation for academic success. Without discipline, even academic success is useless because society only tolerates disciplined people. It is 2013 and the options for instilling discipline are very different from what happened 20 or 25 years ago. Back then a teacher would easily tell a student to lie down before delivering any number of strokes of the cane. This week Education Times tackles the issue of whether as a society we have become soft when it comes to disciplining children. After all even Bible teaches that sparing the rod spoils the child. Much that teaching need not be taken literally there are still many different ways in which children can be disciplined without exerting physical pain. Schools need to set clear rules and regulations that students need to read and understand. The same rules should be read and understood by parents as well so that when a child breaks them there is no need for a parent to pretend that their child is innocent. These rules must be very clear and applied without fear or favour. When administering punishments the school authorities must do this without thinking about the status of the child’s parent. This way justice will be seen to be done and it will serve as a good deterring example to other children. Schools must therefore work on discipline first before thinking of academic success. Children must always remember that if they cannot behave in school then outside school security organs like the police and even the army will be waiting to offer tougher punishments that may include long jail sentences. Yes we can raise disciplined children without beating the living daylights out of them.