Simone Weil Discipline

Discipline in Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies by Simone Weil “Students must therefore work without any wish…to win school successes…applying themselves equally to all their tasks, with the idea that each one will help to form in them the habit of that attention which is the substance of prayer” (Weil 59). For the modern student, education is a rigorous ritual of deadlines, standardized tests, and overscheduling all to prove their worth to an admissions committee or future employer. Success requires strict focus and attention to detail; a behavior Simone Weil denounces and aims to redirect in Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies. Weil believes that a religiously conscious student should use their studies not to strengthen
their GPAs, but to reinforce their religious intelligence via the development of their faculty of attention. On life’s stage, a person must play the role of a hardworking student if they aspire to be a successfully receptive and therefore disciplined Christian behind the scenes. Weil does not reject education in its entirety; she rejects its definition of “correctness” for students. For instance, “if we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry; and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer in doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress…[and] this apparent effort has brought more light into the soul” (58). The traditional education system would repudiate this work, deeming it an inefficient use of time without concluding an objectively correct answer. However, the religious student still benefits from frugal effort by maintaining a sense of discipline. Life’s stage is set with students clamoring towards institutions with high academic expectations. The practice of self-restraint becomes guiding shouts from the director, forcing students into routines that bleed from their scholarly lives onstage to their pious habits offstage. Those in favor of an orthodox teaching method would argue that the education system is meant to foster a student’s ability to succeed in and outside of the classroom by directing their efforts towards objectively correct work.
Any approach to work deemed “good” by the classroom should be applied just as successfully in all facets of life, personal or otherwise. Weil would respond that devout students’ “deep purpose should aim solely at increasing the power of attention with a view to prayer” (59), and they should “take great pains to examine…attentively…each school task in which [they] have failed… [to] acquire the virtue of humility” (59-60). If the instrument of work is an accomplishment in the classroom, then failure will never be present. Weil argues that a student’s deliberate focus on their errors will lead them to a virtuous life, one that does not align with an impartially successful lifestyle. The academic student becomes an antihero to the religious student, striving for success yet growing morally bankrupt throughout each successive act of their performance. Conversely, the religious student will appear to fall short of their intelligent counterpart while bolstering their intimate connection with God. They become the truly dedicated actor, devoting themselves to their performance through sustained, intense attention to every task they are given. And in this lifelong concentration, students who love God will always have a religiously fulfilled
life.