The act of disciplining children cannot be based upon merely "putting a stop" to negative actions by means of reactionary techniques of control. If educators begin to consider discipline as a major aspect of the educational aim of socialization of children, significant contributions toward their moral and social development will take place. Socialization must be a major element in a total education for students. Discipline within this social education must be preventative as well as corrective and based on the Trinity of Discipline--structure, intervention, and consistency. It must guide children in the development of a social consciousness and not merely be seen as a means of repentant melancholy. Discipline must be a process constructed and enacted in harmony with moral educational theory, whereby children experience social consequences consistent with the next-higher moral stage in their development. Discipline as an aspect of the social life of the school must contribute to the cognitive moral development of children and not merely restrict or shape them, for social consciousness is a product conceived in thought and interaction rather than blind obedience. (Author/DCS)