School discipline and calling for backup

Discipline is always a hot topic in education. Teachers testify that disruptions squander learning time and their daily impotence in the face of those disruptions ranks among the prime frustrations that drive them from the classroom. Students resent the theft of attention by obnoxious classmates. And parents almost universally call for stricter discipline, at least for other people’s children.

Before we consider the issue, we need to identify what we don’t mean by school discipline. We’re not talking about school shootings. Setting aside the resulting passionate debates about the Second Amendment, the endless parade of canned anti-bullying programs, and the psychobabble that we’re all part of the problem, these murders are the acts of psychopaths and gangsters. That they happen at school doesn’t make them school discipline problems anymore than homicidal road rage is a highway maintenance problem.

School discipline isn’t about weapons violations, drug trafficking and aggravated assault. These are police matters. English teachers are supposed to deal with rudeness, cutting class and an occasional scuffle at recess. Criminals and chronic offenders should be expelled. It’s absurd to argue that the best, most socially beneficial placement for a felon is in the midst of children.

Some observers regard attending school as a privilege. Others contend that expelling offenders violates their implied right to an education. Yet even our most unalienable rights aren’t irrevocable. Our liberty can be revoked if we violate the law. Surely you can also lose your right to remain in English class.

Many experts and advocates resist removing students from school, even on a temporary basis. They’ve instituted a halfmeasure called in-school suspension, a revolving door holding tank from which students with chronic behavior problems can often and easily return. Proponents argue that sending troublemakers home rewards them and that “suspending” them from school in school, a curious notion, is better for them.

First and frankly, not sending a troublemaker home also means you don’t have to deal with his parents. Second, what’s better for that student shouldn’t be the central point. Each student counts, but he doesn’t count more than everybody else put together. What’s best for the rest of the children is more important.

I’m so tired of endless meetings and perpetual discussions about what’s good for the student who’s making everybody else’s life miserable. What about all the other children in the class? By the time any student is suspended, he’s already received far more than one student’s share of attention, time and resources. Why divert further additional resources to offenders who’ve already stolen education from students who are willing to accept it?

Instead of the sensible action we need, we get euphemisms. We get “time outs” and “respect and responsibility rooms” and “Plan B,” where the most troubled, often irrational students negotiate the terms of their remaining in class with a purportedly more rational adult. We get inane suggestions from the National Education Association like “urge the biggest talkers to exchange phone numbers,” and “establish procedures and urge students to practice them.” We sacrifice learning time for bandwagon regimens like Positive Behavior Intervention and Support, which employs bribes, prizes, and sloganeering in a dubious attempt to teach all students what 90 percent of them already know about decency and good behavior and the other 10 percent don’t care about.

Teachers resort to these programs because they’re ordered to and because they’re desperate. They know how tenuous their control over their classrooms really is. Some of us, in truth, just don’t have the knack for managing people. In other cases, it’s because teachers have been trained lately not to think of themselves as commanders, which among our many roles is what we are. We’re responsible for leading our students and leading means being in charge.

But even the most willing and able teachers frequently face a crippling lack of support from above. Some administrators are philosophically reluctant to impose penalties. Removed as they are from the classroom, many focus only on the perceived welfare of the culprit sitting before them. The wreckage of the other children he’s left in his wake lies beyond the horizon of their office and their sensitivity. Even principals with backbone and common sense are commonly constrained by administrators and boards over their heads. Waffling and appeasement are the order of the day. The result is that teachers are frequently both the first and last lines of defense against misbehavior, danger and classroom chaos.

That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. That’s also not the way it can work.

Back in Mayberry, Deputy Fife was trying to preserve law and order. One day some traveling bad guys saw through his bluster and they challenged him. Barney acknowledged that they could probably take him, but that they couldn’t take the whole town he had behind him.

Good teachers govern by the force of their personality. That’s what I try to do. But it’s not enough. I need to know that somebody’s got my back. More crucially, so do my students. They need to see that I’ve got a town behind me. They need to see that when I speak, my words will stand because there are others, my principal and my school board in particular, standing with me.

In too many cases in too many schools that’s not what they see.

Peter Berger has taught English and history for 30 years. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.