Right now, there is lots of talk and argument about reforming our schools. How can we do it? What should a new classroom or school or school system look like? But everybody agrees on one point -- no changes will work unless we have discipline in our schools. In fact, lack of discipline consistently appears as one of the top concerns when people are asked what's wrong with U.S. schools.
People mean various things when they talk about good discipline. In old-fashioned schools, and in some schools today, it means a classroom where you can hear a pin drop unless the teacher is talking or a student who has been called on is "reciting."
I'd define good discipline more broadly. Kids who are participating in their learning -- and are excited about it -- sometimes make plenty of noise. The real point is that good discipline means a climate in which students can and do work. A school where discipline is good has the kind of atmosphere you'd find in any decent workplace. Indeed, society could hardly go on without the kind of discipline I'm describing.
Yet it's altogether lacking in many of our schools and classrooms. All you need is one kid who torments other kids who are working or disrupts the class by shouting obscenities at the teacher to make sure that no work gets done. And in many inner-city schools, most classes probably have one. That's why some parents remove their children from public schools and send them to parochial
schools, which have a well-deserved reputation for making kids behave. (And if the kids don't behave, out they go-back to public school.)
That's why so many people admired Joe Clark, the former principal in Paterson, N.J. They recognized that no learning can take place in a school where teachers' time is taken up in controlling kids who don't want to learn. What they didn't realize when they praised Joe Clark is that he didn't do anything for education and that he kicked out a number of kids who weren't disruptive.
How did our schools get into this spot? A whole series of legal decisions defining students' rights have made it all but impossible to get rid of the few kids who can change a school into a holding tank. The decisions were made for what looked like the best possible reasons: concern with fairness and due process for students and the lack of any alternative. When judges asked themselves whether disruptive students would be better off in the streets or in school, the answer was usually in school. But no matter how well meaning, these decisions have played havoc with our schools.
Suppose a principal decides to expel a student who has made the lives of teachers and other students miserable. The principal will have to spend time consulting with a lawyer and then maybe three days in court -- a lot of it waiting for the case to come up. And of course bringing the case will cost money -- for the lawyer and for substitutes if teachers have to testify. So a principal in a high school of 2000 kids where only 20 of them -- that's one percent -- are bad enough to expel would spend about 60 days out of a 180-day school year in court. How would he manage the school when he was away that often? Where would he find the big chunk of money to cover the costs? And what would be the likely outcome of a trial anyway? Probably the kid would be sent back to school, triumphant, to take up where he left off before the principal tried to expel him. No wonder so many of these kids stay in school until they decide to leave.
The result is schools where little or no learning goes on because teachers have to assume the role of warden. And the message-to the good kids as well as the bad -- is that actions have no consequences. We want youngsters to learn about freedom and about the rights they are guaranteed as citizens of this country. But what good is this if they don't also learn that, with freedom, there is responsibility and that their own rights cannot be secured at the expense of the rights of others? Of course these kids need help, and they should not be turned out onto the streets, but forcing the public schools to keep them will soon turn the schools into places for these students only as everybody else flees.
It's time to reconsider the legal rulings that have made many of our schools places where only bad lessons are likely to be learned. Some will worry that African-American and other minority children will suffer disproportionately if current rulings about school expulsion and related matters are set aside. After all, the disproportionate number of minority children who were expelled from schools is one reason why the rulings were made in the first place.
Perhaps. But minority children are in the majority in today's inner-city schools, and they are suffering disproportionately from rulings made on their behalf The parents who welcomed Joe Clark were African-Americans who knew that their children could not learn in classrooms where anti-learning kids were able to determine the tone. The African-American parents who send their children to parochial schools and the ones who are pressing now for private-school choice are all telling us that the discipline issue is one we have to deal with if we hope to reform our schools. I think they're right.