More on Discipline

1.25.11 By Rachel Singh

One of my housemates works at an elite private elementary school in Boston and a few months ago, she was frustrated that her students were acting up and she did not know how to manage them. I asked her about the discipline structure at her school, and she replied that the school lacked a formal discipline structure, but all incidents should be addressed through conversations.  If a problem arises, teachers are expected to talk to students about why their behavior was inappropriate and that conversation alone is expected to prevent the behavior from arising again and make amends for any disruption caused by the behavior.  While I definitely think that positive models of behavior management depend on conversations with students, I cannot imagine a classroom without consequences, where students just talk about what they’ve done wrong and leave it at that.  I assume the argument for such a system is that all consequences are construed as a punishment and such a punitive system only threaten children into submission and fear.  Talking is the only way to teach the desired messages about how to control yourself and your behavior. I cannot, however, imagine anyone arguing against consequences and punishment in a school serving poor children of color.  In fact, the most highly esteemed schools for poor children of color right now even call themselves “no excuses” charter schools.  You can’t teach poor brown kids if you make excuses for them.  And you really can’t teach them without uniforms and high stakes tests and contracts for parents and “tough love.”

My friend’s story raises an interesting question: can we teach our students and motivate them without fear or threats?  I try to be very careful not to come across as threatening my student when I remind them of the consequences of their actions.  I certainly don’t want to be an agent of fear and repression in their lives.  But what is even more interesting to me is that the school where this approach is taken seriously is a school for elite children. It makes me wonder, what do we teach our students when we remove concrete consequences for their actions?  How can we motivate people without threatening them with consequences?

Unfortunately, because it is already a privilege to go to a school like this, it is even more of a privilege to be educated in an environment that motivates without threats or consequences.  A few years ago, William Deresiewicz wrote an incredibly poignant piece on the disadvantages of an elite education in which he uncovered the world of entitlement that young people join when they attend our nation’s top universities.  He writes, “The elite like to think of themselves as belonging to a meritocracy, but that’s true only up to a point. Getting through the gate is very difficult, but once you’re in, there’s almost nothing you can do to get kicked out. Not the most abject academic failure, not the most heinous act of plagiarism, not even threatening a fellow student with bodily harm—I’ve heard of all three—will get you expelled. The feeling is that, by gosh, it just wouldn’t be fair—in other words, the self-protectiveness of the old-boy network, even if it now includes girls.”  Just look at the recent bailouts and extended tax cuts if you want to see how free the lives of the elite are from consequences. 

On the first day of our Language, Power, and Democracy class this summer, our instructor posed a crucial question: who is being educated in our society and to do what?  I looked back at my four years at Harvard and saw very clearly that I was taught that I was a future leader of our country and world, so I was to make the rules, not follow them.  I was being educated to lead, with the implicit assumption that I was so great and intelligent that my success could only possibly mean the success and prosperity of our country and democracy. I was taught that what benefited me would benefit everyone else.  The truth is not that the system needs the brains and energy of my peers to flourish, but that it really needs their buy-in and faith that they are working in a just, democratic society in order to maintain the status quo and deflect meaningful calls for change.  If the myth of the meritocracy is strong enough, the elite never need to examine their privilege and see who it comes at a cost to.

I look at my students, and I know they are not being educated for the same thing that I was.  Leave aside the quality of their education for a moment, and ask what are poor students of color being educated for, even at the highest performing schools for their demographic.  The “no excuses” charter schools with the best test scores are very much militarized, with their control of even a student’s posture as she sits at her desk or the way he holds a pen.  When I interviewed at one such school last year, my interviewer asked me how I felt about tough love.  The implication is that that’s the only kind of love we can give to poor kids of color.  In these environments of intense discipline and surveillance, we seem to be saying that the best thing we can do for poor children of color is to teach them to follow the rules, because consequences matter when you’re poor and black.  Just ask the men I tutor in prison. 

To me, the tragedy is not that there are different consequences for different classes of people, but when schools - institutions of education and democracy - embrace this condition and become an agent of control and surveillance in our children’s lives.  Most schools for poor kids are content with teaching those children to be docile workers, to follow the rules, even (or perhaps especially) when they are unjust and unequal, not to make a fuss, to look, act and sound like the white middle class so that we can perpetuate this myth that education can repair all the damage our politics and economy has wrought. No, I do not want a classroom without consequences, where all we do is talk.  Consequences are real.  But I don’t want to teach my students that the only way out is the way of uniforms and correct posture, the way of looking and sounding less threatening and more acceptable in that college or job interview.  I also don’t want to teach at a school that believes that either. 

Change will happen when those entrusted with the education of our society’s children decide to teach them for critical thought and consciousness, for rich literate and moral lives, for equity and freedom.  I know such schools exist; I work at one.  But I also know they will only be islands of decency until our entire district chooses to reexamine the goals and consequences of public education in poor communities of color.  I want to join a movement of teachers who seek to educate their students for change, for recognizing everything that is beautiful and valuable in themselves, and for using all their gifts to make something better than what we’ve got.  Because change isn’t going to come from people who have been educated to believe that everything they value depends on the system remaining as it is.  It’s also not going to come from people who have been educated for prison and for sustained oppression.  It’s going come from people who have been educated for independent thought and for justice.