The release of Nathan Maynard’s The Science of Discipline has reignited a fundamental debate in American education regarding the primary purpose of school discipline: whether it exists to diagnose and accommodate individual psychological needs or to form the character and habits necessary for civic life. This tension, which traces its roots back to the Enlightenment, pits a Madisonian view of human nature—which suggests that institutions are necessary to restrain impulse and encourage virtue—against a more Rousseauian perspective that views children as naturally good but often suppressed by the heavy hand of adult authority....