Discipline in Public Schools

Report Outline
Growth of Disorder in High Schools
Weakening of Authority Over Pupils
Response of Schools to New Challenge

Growth of Disorder in High Schools

Rising Tide of Student Defiance and Violence

The nation's public schools are about to open their doors to what is likely to be their most critical year for disciplinary management since the schoolmaster put away the birch rod. The private schools will have their troubles, too, but they are still in position to pick and choose, to suspend and expel, as they see fit, and they are not so hemmed in by bureaucratic controls nor so harassed by conflicting pressures. The public schools, holding a mandate for mass education but possessed of inadequate resources and involved in social crises beyond their control, are in for a rough time, and most of their teachers and administrators know it. The trouble is complex, pervasive, many-faceted; the most immediate problem before the educators can be summed up in two words: student unrest.

Student disorders during the 1968–69 school year gave warning of what to expect in the year ahead. Trouble was not confined to crowded and decaying schools of the inner city; it struck repeatedly at country and suburban schools as well. Long before the term ended in June, it had become clear that the crack in the authority structure of American education, first opened on college campuses, had spread down into senior and junior high schools and even reached into elementary schools. Concern over the situation currently centers on the secondary schools. A high-ranking official of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare told newsmen, Aug. 20, that a diminution of disorder on college campuses was expected this autumn but that the prospect of rising violence in senior and junior high schools remained.

A new assertiveness, incredibly brazen by standards of the past, has obviously taken hold of the adolescent captives of the compulsory education system. Some adults cheer it, many deplore it; the consensus seems to be that it has aspects both good and bad. Youth's concern for the quality of education and for peace and justice raises few complaints. But its contempt for authority and its roughshod manner of expressing grievances are unsettling, almost frightening to the elders of school and community. Even when motivated by youthful idealism, the challenge to authority thrown down by young militants has helped to create an atmosphere in many schools conducive to the release of aggressive impulses of less benign origin.