In 1642 the Massachusetts General Court passed one of the very first laws about education in what would become the United States. It ruled that because it was apparent “the good education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any Common-wealth,” all parents and guardians were required to make sure children received “so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue, & knowledge of the Capital Lawes.” Educating children well enough to read and understand the laws of the community was considered so critical that local selectmen were put in charge of making sure it was done -- and they would be able to tell children hadn’t been educated properly if they became “rude, stubborn & unruly.”
For generations to come the power of education to develop good character and put young people on the right path remained a cornerstone of American thought about teaching our children. Building good citizens stayed right up there with reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic as a key goal of education and was one of the early justifications for providing public schools for all, as leaders continued to argue that if educating every child benefitted the whole community neglecting education was dangerous for everyone.
Thomas Jefferson, a strong advocate for expanding educational opportunity across classes (at least for whites), said in an 1818 letter: “If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education.” A few decades later education reformer Horace Mann, considered the “father” of the common school movement in America, made a similar point: “Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.” For many more years teachers remained deeply respected community members who were often revered for being strong positive role models. This was considered especially critical when teachers were filling this role for children who otherwise might not be getting it at home.
But today something has changed. We still say all of the same kinds of things about the power good schools and teachers have to radically transform a child’s chances in life. We’ve now measured the connection between how much education a child receives and future success. We know the dangers of dropping out, especially for the most vulnerable children and youths who have fewer high quality schools and resources than affluent children and fewer positive options for spending unsupervised time away from school. Politicians and celebrities do public service ads urging children to stay in school. But as soon as a child gets in trouble, too often the very first thing schools do is to kick them out of class. A public school student receives an out-of school suspension every second and a half during the school year. I’ve never understood how it makes any sense, for example, to suspend or put a child out of school who is absent, truant, or tardy and is not coming to school. Wouldn’t it make more sense to find out why they are not coming to school? And when as many as 7.5 million children are chronically absent, as a new report by Johns Hopkins’ Robert Balfanz says, shouldn’t we have more vigilant policies to determine why and tackle the causes?
Data released this spring by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights showed in 2009 that 6.9 percent of all students received at least one out-of-school suspension; the out-of-school suspension rate went up to 14.7 percent for black students. We may continue to talk about education as the great equalizer, but when it comes to pushing children out of school we are failing black children most, especially black males. According to the New York Times, "One in five black boys and more than one in 10 black girls received an out-of-school suspension. Over all, black students were three and a half times as likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers." We need to get to the root of these racial disparities.
The findings are even more troubling for the most serious school forms of discipline: Over 70 percent of students involved in school-related arrests or who are referred to law enforcement are Hispanic or black. Zero tolerance school discipline policies only add to the problem. The stories of six-year-old kindergartener Salecia Johnson, who was arrested in handcuffs at her Milledgeville, Georgia elementary school in April and driven to the police station in a squad car for throwing a tantrum, and Desre’e Watson, who underwent the same ordeal several years ago as a six-year-old kindergartner in Avon Park, Florida, were horrifying reminders that even our youngest children are at risk of being poorly handled. I find it hard to believe that one, two, or three adults can’t manage a six-year-old during or after a temper tantrum without calling the police and arresting them. Sometimes I think we adults have lost our common and moral sense!
Instead of educating children well enough so that they will not become “rude, stubborn, & unruly” we now reject them at the first sign of any disobedience using widely subjective catchall phrases and offenses like disrespectful or disruptive. Most suspensions are for nonviolent offenses. Too many schools are pushing children into the juvenile and criminal justice systems to make them someone else’s problem. It should be little surprise when so many of the same children who are punished by being pushed out of school go on to become the same ones who drop out and stay away for good. A public high school student drops out of school every nine seconds during the school year. And it should be even less surprising when many of the young people who drop out are the same ones whose behavior we continue to complain about and fear and for whom we pay to build costly prison cells later. It’s called the cradle to school to prison pipeline. States are spending on average two and a half times more per prisoner than per public school pupil. I think this is a very dumb investment policy which hurts children and the nation’s future workforce.
If giving all children an education still benefits an entire community, and if not educating children still makes it more likely their future “ignorance and vices” will “cost us [dearly] in their consequences,” every time a child is excluded from school by adults or is chronically absent without any actions to determine why, we are failing the child and undercutting the importance of education. Hundreds of years after Americans first made that connection, what will it take for us to get it again today?
Geoff Canada, CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, Dr. Robert Balfanz, and a distinguished panel of educators will be discussing the importance of closing the achievement gap for poor children at CDF’s national conference on July 24th. The first step to educating children is keeping them in rather than putting them out of school.
Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender
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You wouldn't want someone stopping your kid's education...
If I wanted to be a cop, I would have gone to the academy. I'm a teacher, not a psychiatrist, nor am I the parent that many don't have. Our kids can't multiply and barely read because our classrooms have become a staging area for the UFC!
We must look into upbringing. The education might be good and teachers of various subjects may also be good, but there is no upbringing! There is no such subject; there are no people who work on the upbringing. There is none of that. Upbringing as we understand it has lost the meaning it had in previous generations when we used to raise children so they would be good, kind, behave properly, and so on. Upbringing today is something altogether different and we are increasingly sensing that it is necessary to all. That’s because “receiving an upbringing” or “education” means knowing how to act with yourself, with the environment, and in different situations that happen to us.
Education happens by example, but we lack the proper model of existence ourselves, so we can’t set an example for our children. Children will always want to be like adults. If we, the adults, begin to behave in another way, children will immediately imitate us.Therefore, the best that we can do for our children is to start with educating ourselves.
I'm sure the blogger, Ms Wright Edelman, is aware of how Finland does it, but I thought that the readers who are inclined to respond negatively to her blog should have a look at this.
I don't have time for yoga breathing! I need to TEACH!
If my kid is in your classroom, and you allow disrespect to go on and on while you breathe an pray, stopping my child's learning, we'd be having a conference. You are a middle school teacher, not a parole officer.
Know your job description.
As to school related arrests, there has to be some common sense applied but low ceiling (maybe 3) has to be set for expulsion or assignment to special schools. Chronic In class disruptors will not benefit from more class time and trigger like activity in others. They need to be sorted out early and salvaged if possible - VoTec programs are too often misused as disciplinary programs, thus ruining them too
M.F. then the 'N' word. They would trash the bus and refuse to pay the fair. I did not wonder about whether the school had encouraged this behavior. I wondered what kind of home life they had...
Condisder, however, the impact of the miscreants on the other students. The disruptive student isn't just an annoyance for the teacher. She or he is taking teacher time and attention away from students who are trying to learn. Similarly, a truant student will be signficantly behind the rest of the class. The teacher may have to teach the same lesson repeatly if students are regularly absent without valid excuse. This causes other students to become bored and disengaged. They are ready to move on but are held hostage to the poor decisions of their truant classmates.
Quite frankly, solving these problems in any meaningful way will involve a lot more resources than communities have demonstrated a willingness to spend. In economic terms, the marginal costs may be higher than the marginal benefits. The low hanging fruit has already been picked. Addressing the issues underlying the visible problems is neither simple nor inexpensive. Many students are disruptive or truant because they lack the basic academic skills necessary for success. They need more personal attention, not large classes where sheer numbers make it difficult to address the students' individual needs.
Although I don't condone violence, but I think that some type of physical discipline in needed when the child is young cause that's the only thing they can understand, ie if I don't behave I'll get punish and i won't like it. Most people I know who are polite and mature and know not to be rude have been through some strict childhood. Parents just need to learn that as the child grow they need to tone it down and when to tone it down.
It's well documented that young children do not understand consequences in the same way adults do. Physical discipline is also well known not to help children. What does a kid learn when you use "physical discipline" on them? They learn that it's OK for bigger people to hurt smaller people.
What kind of home were you raised in that you would advocate hurting young kids?
Why do people assume that children who act out have bad parents? The complete lack of empathy and understanding for children is shocking. The problem is the culture shown by comments here which says anyone who acts up should be expelled, hurt, imprisoned, etc.
Thanks to Ms Edelman and people like her, we know how to help children who are distressed, upset and acting out. We just need the teachers like those on this list to learn how to do it. Let's stop t he drum beat of attacks against families and learn from the experts on how to help kids.
an open hand to the bottom is not child abuse