"One unintended consequence of rising levels of compulsory education has been to trap unwilling students in school. Why should they be unwilling to take advantage of a free opportunity? In some cases, they cannot take advantage of public schooling because of emotional, physical, or intellectual problems that a mass educational system cannot cope with. In other cases, particular teachers have not done a good job, and children lose their way. In still other cases, personal or family problems may have interposed situational obstacles to learning. Whatever the explanation, however, the fact is that some children grow alienated at school. They leave school in third world countries, even countries where education is nominally compulsory, because public education is expensive, and overcrowded schools have all the willing students they can handle.

But industralized countries refuse to take no for an answer. Truant officers round up youngsters enrolled but not attending school. In some cities with high truancy rates, the yare literally plucked off the streets and bused back to school. Juvenile courts hold hearings in which judges threaten youngsters and their parents. Dropout-prevention programs mobilize both carrots and sticks in an effort to get every child to graduate from high school. Some school districts pay potential dropouts to attend school; some states revoke the driver's licenses of students who drop out.

A consequence of all this effort is that some schools - mainly in urban areas - accumulate high concentrations of unwilling students with little or not stake in conformity. There are two unfortunate consequences of this: First, the educational process suffers; it is difficult for teachers to teach effectively and for students to learn what they are supposed to be learning in a tense custodial atmosphere in which the main priority necessarily is managing students who pay little attention when they go to classes, don't do homework, and undermine teacher authority by defiant behavior. Second, teachers and students become targets of assaults, not only from students who regard themselves as prisoners rather than learners but also from intruders from the community where the school is located. Often these intruders are former students or friends or enemies of currently enrolled students...

Society does not want to deny them educational opportunities; and the door should be open for their return - as soon as they are ready to take education seriously. But public schools cannot put the welfare of phantom students ahead of the welfare of real students [Ed: Emphasis mine]. Schools are not recreation centers or rehabilitation centers for delinquents. Truth requires that someone deliver this message if American educational policy is to be realistic and effective. If the calling of sociology is the enlightenment of opinion, as Edward Shils has assured us, a sociologist may have to assume this burden."

--- School violence, Jackson Toby


I hope PC left-wingers don't recommend implementing their various educational strategies on such students - these work not only if you have bountiful (or unlimited) resources, but more importantly, students who are willing to learn. In an environment where you have to be a zookeeper, you're not going to be able to accommodate the learning styles of the students who do actually want to learn.

But then as my brother in law commented, putting such kids in school is a social service, since they won't be out on the streets commiting crime.

Incidentally, this might be another benefit of streaming - it can group disruptive/uninterested students together to reduce the disruption to the rest (with the usual qualifications about how 10% of post-streamed may lose out, but then this is better than making everyone suffer).

The line about the welfare of phantom students was especially interesting - some PC behavior is about preventing phantom groups from perceived offence or discrimination.


From the same essay:

"In February 1992, two students at Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, New York, were fatally shot by an angry classmate... The lethal violence probably would not have occured without the guns and knives that students brought into the school despite security officers who screen for weapons with magnetometers.

Why the weapons? Students blame the violent neighborhood in which the school is located; they say that they are afraid of their own safety without a weapon for self-protection."

They search students for weapons? But... But... Equipping everyone with weapons deters criminals from firing in the first place!