Getting serious about school discipline

Public Interest, Fall, 1998 by Jackson Toby

These occasional lethal rampages, of course, do not stop with teachers. There has been a spate of recent massacres of fellow students in schools like the one in Springfield, Oregon, in May of this year. In a speech to the 4,000 delegates to the annual convention of the American Federation of Teachers on July 20, President Clinton specifically mentioned the Oregon shooting in the course of calls for stricter school discipline as a means of preventing such tragedies.

Explaining school violence

The public is shocked more by violence when it occurs in schools, especially rural or suburban schools, than when it occurs on the streets of American cities, where it is statistically more frequent. Following media reports of such incidents, I usually get calls from journalists asking me for an explanation. Even though I have studied school violence for 20 years, I don't have a good explanation for specific eruptions any more than a meteorologist can explain why lightning struck a particular tree. Perhaps such extraordinary episodes of school violence represent an irreducible level of psychopathology that afflicts youngsters as well as adults. On the other hand, it may be the logical extension of everyday school violence, and everyday school violence - which typically involves mere shoving and punching between male students - can be explained. For me the right question is not why lethal violence sometimes occurs on school premises but why students are more prone to misbehave in school than they used to be.

The usual explanation for the change is that school discipline has become lax. But that explanation begs the question of what precisely "school discipline" involves. Essentially, "school discipline" implies that students know that bad behavior will be costly for them. What made it costly a generation ago was that schools were orderly; students knew that teachers cared whether they misbehaved or not and might give bad academic grades or unfavorable disciplinary reports when they observed such misbehavior. An orderly school was one in which students were wary of all teachers, not just their own but of any disapproving teacher whom they encountered in hallways, stairs, cafeterias, or schoolyards. The basis for school discipline lay at least as much in the student's awareness that teachers were vigilant and capable of invoking penalties as in such teacher characteristics as charisma or physical strength. The possibility of sanctions was threatening to students because most of them considered success in school important. What requires explanation is why students stopped believing that teachers cared about their behavior and why teachers, even if they cared, stopped enforcing good behavior.

Order in schools is precarious because small numbers of adults are outnumbered by larger numbers of children who may wish, at least initially, to do things other than learn. This has always been the case. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, this chronic problem was exacerbated by social and cultural changes that cumulatively relieved teachers of their disciplinary responsibilities. Two developments in particular stand out. One was the increasing proportion of youngsters enrolled in school who lack a stake in behavioral conformity to school rules. The second was the concomitant weakening of the authority of teachers that previously enabled them to keep the peace in school.

Unruly kids, disorderly schools

Probably the most important single reason that increasing proportions of youngsters have no interest in observing school rules is that more of them now than formerly do not want to be in school at all. Why is this? It has long been true that some children become rebellious simply because they are not there to learn; their families do not provide enough encouragement, support, and preschool training to give them a good chance at competitive success. It has also long been true that some peer groups develop goals unrelated to, or opposed to, academic achievement; children in school are exposed not only to the official curriculum but to the tutelage of their schoolmates, who are more numerous than adult teachers. What has changed is that modern societies now insist on more and more years of education for all children. In former generations, children who hated school dropped out; now they are more likely to remain enrolled regardless of whether they view education as necessary for their future lives.

Why do they stay? In part, they do so for legal reasons. All modern societies have raised the age of compulsory school attendance. But these formal legal requirements are not the whole story. Dropout prevention programs are part of the informal pressure on youngsters to remain enrolled in school at least until high-school graduation. True, many enrolled youngsters are convinced, as adults are, that they need an education to get satisfying jobs in an increasingly complex economy and to participate in the democratic political process. But some don't buy into this adult view; they feel like prisoners. Such youngsters don't respect the rules or those who enforce them as much as the students who regard education as an opportunity.