and reach thousands of daily visitors
20 APRIL 2009
NO 1426
"At-risk"
In its original meaning, the term "at risk" was meant to focus attention on the hazards in the environment, not characteristics of youth. But as Michele Fine noted, the language of risk was twisted to communicate that these young people are not like us (Furstenberg, Cook, Eccles, Elder and Samaroff, 1999). Conservatives used risk as a rationale for isolating these youth, while liberals saw risk as a means of displaying them. Both operated from fear.
The at-risk movement fueled the development of alternative schools with great variation in quality. We recently visited one large urban district where 4,000 students come to an alternative center one hour per week to have their schoolwork checked. If they fulfill this task, they may be allowed back into a full-time alternative school. The strongest criticism of alternative schools is not that they fail students, but that they stream into dysfunctional high schools (Heneggler, Schenwald, Borduin, Rowland and Cunningham, 1998). Purged of troublemakers, depersonalized and factory schools herd along the adolescents who want to meet adult expectations.
Ever since the passage of compulsory school attendance laws, schools have found loopholes to permit discarding disruptive students. Rather than change the nature of education, schools remove those who disrupt classroom order. Most of these students have behavior and learning disabilities. Some schools hire consultants who show school boards clever tricks for not identifying such children. Such students often end up imprisoned in the juvenile justice system (Heneggler et al, 1998).
Schools are required to develop zero-reject policies for special needs students. Many are more concerned with zero-tolerance.Let's make it clear, we don't agree with those who say schools should be tolerant of destructive behavior. Most parents don't tolerate drug use, disrespect, or violence in their families with their own children. But neither do they throw them out of the house if problems arise. The catchy term "zero-tolerance" has become a code word for disciplining by discarding. If we treat children badly anywhere, soon we will treat children badly everywhere. If we use punishing approaches, we pass them on across generations.
There must be high standards for behavior, but it is a double standard to hold children accountable while letting adults off the hook. Depriving children of an education is educational malpractice. John Goodlad says that education will finally be a moral profession when it stops expelling students to nowhere (Heneggler et al, 1998). If medical professionals were to strap difficult cases to a gurney and push them into the street without treatment, it would be called patient abandonment. To expel teenagers to the streets is an act of violence condemning these young people to be failures in their lives and threats to the rest of us.
Instead of providing special services, some schools are criminalizing misbehavior by transforming unfortunate schoolyard conflicts into violations of the criminal code — doing whatever it takes to get rid of a particularly disruptive child. What once might have been seen as a playground fistfight becomes battery, and threats and profanity become assault. These are serious problems, but we wonder how any responsible educator might think the criminal justice system can raise children better than schools.
LARRY K. BRENDTRO,
ARLIN NESS AND MARTIN MITCHELL
Brendtro, L.K.; Ness, A.
and Mitchell, M. (2001). No disposable kids. Longmont,
Colorado. Sopris West.
REFERENCES
Furstenberg, F.; Cook, T.; Eccles, J.; Elder, G. and Sameroff, A. (1999). Managing to make it: Urban families and adolescent success.Chicago. Univeristy of Chicago Press.
Heneggler, S.; Schenwald, S.; Borduin, C.; Rowland, M. and Cunningham, P. (1998). Multisystemic treatment of antisocial behavior in children and adolescents. New York. Guilford Press.
