Keywords
Education, Discipline, Punishment, American History, 1950s, 1980s, Punitive, High School, Public School, Secondary School, Principal, Educator, Teacher, Administrator, Idealism, Reactionary, Change, Student Discipline, High School Administration, Educational History, Due Process, Mental Hygiene, Juvenile Delinquency, Social Control
Disciplines
Education
Mentor
David Zwart
Abstract
This comparative historical analysis examines the profound ideological transformation of student discipline in American secondary schools between 1950 and 1989. Utilizing a comparative textual analysis of primary source documents published in The High School Journal. This study investigates how administrative philosophy, professional concern, and disciplinary practice responded to the sociological and geopolitical views in the respective decades.
The research identifies a core continuity in the school's role as an agent of social control, but documents a fundamental divergence in the mechanisms used to achieve it. The 1950s view, shaped by mental hygiene and democratic idealism, framed discipline as a developmental and therapeutic challenge, emphasizing internal character formation and the practioner's (teachers and administrators) role as a moral guide or "social physician." In a sharp contrast, the 1980s methods were characterized by escalating juvenile delinquency, the "War on Drugs," and the mandatory integration of student constitutional rights and due process, and how this shifted the views of discipline toward a managerial, procedural, and bureaocractic approach that tended to be more punitive and reactionary in nature.
This thesis concludes that the educational system transitioned from relying on and bolstering the student's inner philosophy for order to depending on external, punitive measures. This trade-off prioritized administrative security and legal compliance over the 1950s' emphasis on personalized psychological and character development for a democractic society.
ScholarWorks Citation
Webster, Brendan, "The Loss of the Moral Principal: How the Attitude of School Discipline Changed from the 1950s Through the 1980s" (2025). Honors Projects. 973.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/honorsprojects/973
