[nine_k]

Also, think about these disruptive kids.

They are the minority. They clearly don't function well in the conventional school setting. They are struggling to learn the material. They learn how to disrupt though, and how the grown-ups around them are powerless. They learn to be constantly blamed, and feel miserable, defiant, or both. A lot of wrong lessons.

This makes the lives of these disruptive kids worse. Being in a public school robs them of a chance to become decent people and get an education. These kids should receive a special education, tailored to their special needs, like e.g. autistic kids get a special education.

[trealira]

I think you're giving them a little too much credit. Plenty of disruptive kids have a perfectly fine home life, have an iPhone, get expensive toys or technology bought for them. A lot of them are just jerks who were never punished by their parents, received few punishments from teachers and staff who had little power, and enjoy being disruptive or bullying others, and don't give a shit if they flunk all their tests or classes. The teachers say they're going to become a janitor or drop out of high school at this rate, and they don't care because they've been told this all their lives, because their disruptive behaviors haven't gotten better since kindergarten, only gotten more violent and more sexual. And somehow they manage to squeak by to the next grade.

I say this speaking from my own experience as someone who went to a Title 1 school before taking a test to get into a magnet program when transitioning to high school (about age 14); the difference in disruptive behavior was like night and day to me. I still remember it very clearly.

If education can improve the most by punishing and expelling disruptive students more often, sending them to other schools, I wouldn't be opposed. It would help the non-disruptive majority of students reach their full potential, which is a better outcome than trying to help the disruptive minority at the expense of everyone else.

[nine_k]

I agree, a lot of disruptive kids are not highly disadvantaged. Their problem is a bad environment that helped develop their worst attitudes, so they do enjoy disrupting, bullying, and seeing other kids and grown-ups dumbfounded and hurt.

This is not good for them already. The current public school system just keeps helping them develop these valuable antisocial skills. These kids keep thinking that everyone around are weak fools, and that their disruptive behavior is a way to win.

A different environment, where there is nobody to easily bully, where the grown-ups are not bemused or annoyed by their conduct but expect outbreaks and are prepared to handle them, where the kids are shown different examples of adult behavior that they are used to, might help. More, well-prepared psychologists who definitely should be present in such a school would help these kids understand themselves, their disruptive impulses, why these impulses are ultimately bad, and what ways out are there. These kids are still kids, many not even teenagers. They are still actively learning what a social life is; giving them a good example tailored to them is utterly important.

I do not expect 100% success rate, but I'm pretty certain that it might work much better than a typical helpless public school.

[marcus_holmes]

You said "punish" so many times. Punishing unruly kids doesn't stop them being unruly. They just learn to hate the system and everything in it.

I got expelled from 2 kindergardens, and then was sent to a Montessori school. Where I was fine, even helpful.

"the beatings will continue until behaviour improves" just doesn't work, has never worked.

Maybe we shouldn't have one school experience for all the kids. Maybe some kids work fine with an authoritarian system and like having a set of rules to follow. Other kids don't.

[loandbehold]

You are conflating two unrelated issues: 1. Letting students learn their own way as opposed to memorizing teachers' instructions 2. Letting disruptive kids disrupt education of their classmates

#1 is good, #2 is bad. In fact #1 never works when #2 is present.

[marcus_holmes]

I'm not an education expert. But I think you have to ask why the disruptive kids are being disruptive. It might be that #2 is caused by not having #1 (at least, that was my experience: I stopped being disruptive when they let me do my own thing).

[theGnuMe]

I agree with you as a parent of a kid who has been labeled as disruptive. My kid is a smart sweet loving child who has big emotions and gets overstimulated. If anything he is bullied and taken advantage of by the other kids, yet he is the one who is disciplined because he has big reactions in the school setting. Kids can be really mean. In many sense the school is inflexible largely because of budget constraints. This is why we have large class sizes. Can you imagine handling 26-30 4th graders?

I am lucky in some sense because I can afford all the therapies, private tutors and teachers as necessary. I can throw money at the problem where as many kids have parents who cannot. Even then throwing money at the problem doesn't guarantee anything. You have to find the right fit for your kid and hopefully they learn the skills they need and adapt along the way.

To the rest of the commentors in the thread, you cannot segregate kids. The schools need to adapt to them and meet them where they are. In the US Federal Law guarantees this but the reality is that schools are underfunded by a huge amount so when we talk about individualized education and special education services, everything is cookie cutter.

BTW if any parent in this thread section can recommend a great public school system with appropriate Level 3 services please reply. I can literally move anywhere. A 70k a year private school would be hard to afford right now as would a $1-2 million dollar home in said school district but there is really no good information out there for parents.

[marcus_holmes]

Thank you for trying :)

Everything seems to be about forcing the kid into a standardised set of behaviour patterns: "behave like this or we will punish you".

Some kids don't work like that.

[trealira]

I only said it 3 times.

I don't mean to say that everything should be authoritarian. But to maintain a good school for the students who go to a non-authoritarian school, there still needs to be some degree of punishment, or expulsions. Just like in a non-authoritarian government, people who commit violent crimes still need to be sent to jail for the safety of others. Once away from the others, they can be reformed and reintegrated back into a normal setting, where the teachers can trust students not to get into fights more, and kids can learn in a quiet environment where others also want to be high-achievers, or at least are motivated to not become drop-outs.

I just don't think there's enough of that in schools like the one I described. Sorry, I kind of let my past color my tone more than I should have.

[theGnuMe]

You've heard of the school to prison pipeline right?

https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/juvenile-justic...

[trealira]

I've heard of it.

I don't think having over-authoritarian discuplinarianism is ideal. It's probably a backlash to schools not having enough funding or resources to deal with the assaults and the fighting, so they do the exact opposite of what they'd been doing, or what they think of as the opposite. Going too far the other way, overly disciplining students for minor behavior and failing to change their behavior isn't best either.

[xyzzyz]

Yeah, I sadly only heard about it, not actually witnessed it. It doesn't really work anymore, unfortunately, and criminals are kept alongside normal people for far longer than acceptable.

[gotoeleven]

It does work and has always worked. You're living in fantasy land.

[marcus_holmes]

as someone who it has never worked for; you're so wrong.

I was beaten as a kid. It just made me angry. So f*cking angry. It didn't stop me from acting up. I learned to take the beating with pride. I got smarter about when to act up. Everyone involved, literally everyone, had a worse result from this.

I would have had such a better life (and everyone around me) if the people who were supposed to be taking responsibility for me had actually stopped beating me and tried understanding me (like they were supposed to).

[nine_k]

It works, but not in a way you'd like it to.

A related saying of some guy who knew this stuff: "You can make a throne of bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long". You can force people with punishment, but they will try to revolt and get revenge once they have a chance; even a small chance, and a small revenge.

[kelipso]

By that time they will graduate and it won't matter anymore. It's school, not a society consisting of adults.