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The stories of attempting to teach adolescents who have no interest in learning are as appalling as they are familiar. I have long heard similar stories from pe

The stories of attempting to teach adolescents who have no interest in learning are as appalling as they are familiar. I have long heard similar stories from people who went into teaching. But the sweeping conclusion that the students behave this way because "they know deep down that due to the color of their skin, less is expected of them" is thinly supported. Maybe she would feel differently if she had also taught in majority-white schools where students also raise hell. I know that white students can get away with most of this anti-social behavior too, because I met one online in the early 2000s. I was a sophomore in college and he was a sophomore in high school. We were both interested in chemistry and computers and started chatting through the PM system of an overclocking forum. He was bored in school. When he wasn't reading about chemistry and computers on his own he was booby-trapping teachers' equipment and classrooms and spreading mocking nicknames for people he didn't like -- teachers and students alike. He ignored most of his assigned work. He once kept his father's handgun in a backpack through the school day just to see if he could get away with it. His friends were people that he got to work on undermining teachers with him. After a year he ran away from home, got as far as the West Coast, reluctantly returned when his parents said he could leave school, and dropped out to get his GED after returning. After that he went straight to college, grad school for a couple of years and then dropped out, went into software development. AFAIK his antisocial and even criminal behavior fortunately stopped after high school. He got away with pretty much everything while he was still in high school. This was in an affluent majority-white suburb, and his family was even higher income than the area average. Still it seems that teachers had little power to reign in his antisocial behavior. What can we do with school-aged children who have no interest in learning and actively sabotage the educational opportunity for students who show up willing to learn? I don't know. But policies that keep them in school alongside willing learners are not helping. Teachers shouldn't have to be good babysitters and jailers in addition to being good teachers.

iguy 8y ago
Her the description of the problems is vivid, detailed, and sadly not unfamiliar. This is largely separate from her suggestions as to what might solve the problem, or at least reduce it. It's not obviously correct, but I wouldn't be too quick to write it off... she presumably thought about this for a while, and whether or not it would work, it communicates at least something about the students' mental state. I would be curious to hear what sort of system you think your hell-raising overclocker might have benefitted from. In some non-US systems, enough of this would eventually land you in a track which is pretty close to army boot-camp -- very very rigid with lots of focus on standing in line & saying "sir", none at all on french poetry. Do you think this would have improved his life (or that of his classmates)?
- philipkglass 8y ago
  He personally benefited from skipping the last year of high school and attending a university early. That was the first time in his life that he actually found school interesting more often than not. I could sympathize with that because I too thought that school was almost always a boring time-waster before I started attending a university; I almost didn't go because I found school so often pointless for the first 12 years. "Go to college early" is only a solution for a specific, unusual kind of troublemaker. I sympathize more with his teachers. His teachers and fellow students shouldn't have had to endure that behavior from him. Apparently many public school districts, whether poor or affluent, don't ensure that disruptive students can be removed from the classroom. That's what is necessary for teachers to actually teach. What to do with the disruptive students after they're removed from classrooms, I'm not qualified to speculate about. I'm just saying that leaving them in the classroom is also sabotaging all the students who did initially show up willing to learn, and it's hell for the teachers too.
  - iguy 8y ago
    Thanks. I agree that those for whom "go to college early" is a solution must be a small minority, although they do exist. But I do wonder for how many more "do something meaningful" might be a solution. Guys perfectly qualified to be the bricklayer's apprentice... who we've decided must sit still in school until they're 18, even if it's a sad pretence of schooling.

iguy 8y ago

Her the description of the problems is vivid, detailed, and sadly not unfamiliar. This is largely separate from her suggestions as to what might solve the problem, or at least reduce it. It's not obviously correct, but I wouldn't be too quick to write it off... she presumably thought about this for a while, and whether or not it would work, it communicates at least something about the students' mental state. I would be curious to hear what sort of system you think your hell-raising overclocker might have benefitted from. In some non-US systems, enough of this would eventually land you in a track which is pretty close to army boot-camp -- very very rigid with lots of focus on standing in line & saying "sir", none at all on french poetry. Do you think this would have improved his life (or that of his classmates)?

philipkglass 8y ago
He personally benefited from skipping the last year of high school and attending a university early. That was the first time in his life that he actually found school interesting more often than not. I could sympathize with that because I too thought that school was almost always a boring time-waster before I started attending a university; I almost didn't go because I found school so often pointless for the first 12 years. "Go to college early" is only a solution for a specific, unusual kind of troublemaker. I sympathize more with his teachers. His teachers and fellow students shouldn't have had to endure that behavior from him. Apparently many public school districts, whether poor or affluent, don't ensure that disruptive students can be removed from the classroom. That's what is necessary for teachers to actually teach. What to do with the disruptive students after they're removed from classrooms, I'm not qualified to speculate about. I'm just saying that leaving them in the classroom is also sabotaging all the students who did initially show up willing to learn, and it's hell for the teachers too.
- iguy 8y ago
  Thanks. I agree that those for whom "go to college early" is a solution must be a small minority, although they do exist. But I do wonder for how many more "do something meaningful" might be a solution. Guys perfectly qualified to be the bricklayer's apprentice... who we've decided must sit still in school until they're 18, even if it's a sad pretence of schooling.