Ask the American public about the Number One school problem and you get a clear answer: violence and disorder. Of course the public knows that there is violence everywhere and some of it is bound to take place in schools. What it cannot understand is why students who are known to be violent and who come to school with weapons or drugs are permitted to stay in school after a mild punishment or no punishment at all. Nor can they understand why students who destroy the education of all the others by ongoing disruption--shouting obscenities, hitting or threatening to hit other students or the teacher--remain in class.
A few weeks ago, I visited a private school for children with severe disabilities in Washington, D.C. The principal, who is also a professor at a nearby university, often visits city schools. She told me of a school where a severely disturbed student constantly strikes out at kids sitting near him and tries to injure them. He's also a firebug. People in the school are terrified, but in that school he remains. The law about educating children with disabilities does not permit suspension, expulsion or change of placement without the permission of the parents or the courts, and it might take the courts a year-and-a-half to decide the case. (Students who come to school with guns or commit violent acts and who are not designated as disabled at the time they commit the act can get retroactive protection by getting a doctor to say that they were suffering under a disability at the time--much like the use of the insanity defense by murderers.) Meanwhile, the education and safety of the other students are at risk.
This makes no sense. Even a loving parent would not behave in this way. Suppose the violent, firebug child had brothers and sisters. Would their mother allow the problem child to endanger the lives and safety of the others? Would she say that separating the disturbed child from the others would unfairly label and stigmatize him? That it would destroy his self-esteem? Hell no! She would do what she could for her troubled son. She'd spend more time with him and she'd spend more on doctors. But she would also protect her other children from him. Why can't schools act more like rational and loving parents?
A good part of the reason is that we can no longer think straight on these issues. The very language we use has become twisted and distorted. Remember Georqe Orwell's 1984? People in the society Orwell describes cannot think straight because they have been taught, from childhood on, that "war is peace" and "freedom is slavery." We have a similar Orwellian language which paralyzes thought in our schools.
On March 8 the New York Times reported that Schools Chancellor Ramon Cortines plans to remove students carrying weapons from their regular schools for a year: "The older ones would be sent to four-year disciplinary academies ... and students as young as kindergartners would be segregated in disciplinary programs." The article points out that this action reverses "a two-decade policy of allowing principals and school district superintendents to determine punishment for armed or violent students. Many students, even those with guns, are now suspended for a week or so and then allowed back into the school." The Cortines proposal seems reasonable, doesn't it? It "brought support from some board members and many students and parents. But others, including children's advocates, said they are concerned that the measures ... may be trampling on students' rights."
"What would they do if a five-year-old comes to school with a gun?" asked a representative of Advocates for Children: "There are so many things to be concerned about, but suspending the child seems to me so far from what our concern should be." Enter George Orwell. Child advocate? Advocate for all the children or advocate for the right of a violent firebug to endanger the lives of other kids? Ignore a five-year old with a gun? What are we teaching him? That it's O.K. to bring a gun to school! If these are the child advocates, is Ramon Cortines anti-child?
It's time we took our language back. It is Cortines and the parents, students and teachers supporting him who are the child advocates. They are fighting for the safety and education of children. And they want to teach the five-year-old with a gun the most important lesson a school can teach--that his action has consequences and he is responsible for what he does.
Cortines is helping save public education. Many parents want vouchers to send their kids to private schools not because these schools have better teachers or a better curriculum but because guns and bad behavior are not tolerated there. It would be a terrible shame if we pushed 98 percent of the kids--those who want to learn--into private schools because of the two percent who are a threat. Instead, let's isolate the two percent so the others will stay.