Getting serious about school discipline

Public Interest, Fall, 1998 by Jackson Toby

Not only do many school systems employ security guards but some also have metal detectors to screen for knives and guns. The District of Columbia school system employs 250 security officers - along with metal detectors in 31 schools. New York City employs 3,200 security officers, as well as metal detectors. Security guards and metal detectors are useful for inner-city schools that need protection against invading predators from surrounding violent neighborhoods and to break up fights that teachers are afraid to tackle. But security programs cannot be the main instrument for preventing student misbehavior in public secondary schools because security guards are not ordinarily in classrooms where teachers are alone with their students. Furthermore, there are never enough security guards to maintain order in hallways or gyms or cafeterias or to prevent assaults or robberies by their mere presence. In January 1992, Mayor Dinkins visited Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn to deliver a speech. Though the mayor carne with bodyguards, and though security guards were on hand, two students were fatally shot by an angry classmate during Dinkins' visit. Security guards constitute a second line of defense, but they cannot by themselves provide a disciplined environment within which the educational process can proceed effectively.

The primary peace keepers in schools have to be the teachers, as the Japanese experience demonstrates. Japanese high schools do not have security guards or metal detectors, yet all Japanese high schools are safe. How do they do it? Japanese educational requirements make it unnecessary for Japanese high-school teachers to have charismatic personalities to control a class. Run-of-the-mill high-school teachers have a great deal of influence over Japanese students because all of their students want to be students; compulsory education ends in Japan at graduation from junior high school (the ninth grade). Convinced as they are that their futures depend on getting a good education, Japanese high-school students regard their teachers as mentors, not oppressors, and therefore crave the favorable opinions of their teachers. As a result, more than 90 percent of them graduate from high school, a larger proportion than American youths, even though the United States uses high ages of compulsory attendance to attempt to stuff education into the heads of students, willing or not.

Make high school voluntary

If teachers are to maintain control of classrooms, students must care about their approval or disapproval, while not necessarily fearing them. Yet, if students care about what the teacher thinks of them, an element of fear will nevertheless be present - fear of doing something that will jeopardize the teacher's approval. Two institutional changes can reinforce student sensitivity to teachers' reactions. First, make high schools voluntary and require students to justify by studious behavior the public expense of providing them with an education. If students have to prove that they are learning something in order to take advantage of a free education, they will attend class more regularly, pay more attention in class, and do more homework. They will also be more respectful of their teachers and more concerned with earning good grades. The small minority of high-school students who lack the slightest interest in learning anything except how to drive their teachers into another profession would have to choose between getting an education and leaving school until they are ready to take learning seriously.