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Responsibility #33
(written prior to July 1992)
To the People of the United States of America:
We finished the last essay by speaking to the need for school discipline. As the nation is already experiencing, the means required initially to gain and maintain discipline will vary from very little to that which approaches a closed fortress. Whatever it takes for each particular case, must be provided.
Once set forward, the disciplinary rules must be clearly communicated to the students, and their families. The responsibility to see that the students abide by the discipline must be made to rest with the family. Easier said than done? Yes!
In lieu of suspending or expelling students, who refuse to respect the school discipline, they should be "sentenced" to correction at a "Discipline Assurance School". A DAS would be administered as a cross between a military academy and a boot camp, including schooling in residence.
The same courses would be taught as are taught in the regular public schools, so that the rebellious students can be returned to their schools as soon as their discipline is deemed to be reestablished. Hopefully for most miscreants, only a semester or an academic year would prove sufficient to make them believers in the rules set forward for behavior at school. The families of the "sentenced" students would be required to share in the added costs of attendance and residence at a DAS, in accordance with their ability to pay.
The concept of the Discipline Assurance School can have substantial indirect benefits for the community, the state, and the nation. It is likely to nip in the bud the tendency of some students to drift into a life of crime. If applied unwaveringly to dropouts, it will cure the problem of large numbers of citizens who lack a high school education.
If accompanied by laws, that outlaw gangs both inside and outside of schools, it will alleviate the terror in many cities now occurring due to gang warfare. If supplemented by laws requiring the non-possession of guns, and other weapons by minors, it will relieve much of the agony of individuals and families, caused by drive by shootings, gun handling accidents, school massacres, etc. In conjunction with morality and family-oriented classes to be taught in the schools, the enforced discipline should reduce substantially pre-teen and teen age sex, and the resultant pregnancies and diseases.
Discipline must be enforced on the education system itself. The system at each stage should never depart from organization, curricula, teaching methods, and discipline, oriented to meeting Adler's three objectives.
Completion of the elementary grades must indeed mean that each and every student is ready for junior high or middle school. Graduation from those intermediate schools should assure readiness for the challenge of high school. Receipt of a high school diploma should be granted only if all recipients:
1. are prepared for the duties of citizenship, including an appreciation for the roles of mother and father.
2. have been sufficiently indoctrinated in their moral obligation
to lead a good life.
3. have had instilled the desire to make as much of themselves as possible.
4. have satisfactorily completed the courses to reach the degree of readiness to earn a living as appropriate to their individual aptitudes:
a) jobs requiring no further schooling, or in which training will be accomplished on the job or by apprenticeship.
b) entrance requirements for trade and technical schools.
c) entrance requirements for community colleges, colleges or universities.
Fulfillment of these objectives leaves no room for extraneous courses or activities, that have been introduced in schools on a nice to have, or other non-essential basis. Considering the present condition of our society, the current problems in education, and our diminishing world competitiveness, it is proposed that school hours be extended to full business hours and to full calendar year. The schedules for each day can be tailored to fit each age group, thereby precluding burnout.
The extended school hours and year would provide the time to conduct all the courses and activities to meet Adler's "three objectives of any sound system of public schooling". It would also have other very significant benefits. At least minimum home work would assuredly be completed, in supervised study sessions. The latch-key kid problem would be alleviated or eliminated. There would be considerably less time for minors to drift into crime, to stray into sexual or other undesirable behavioral activities, to be over exposed to television, to be bored by nothing to do, to be endangered by the lack of both parental and school supervision, etc. Single parent and two working parent families would be relieved of anxiety, due to their children being on the loose.
There will certainly be extra costs involved. They can be lessened considerably: by the fact that school property will be more completely utilized; by tailoring teacher, or class leader, qualifications to that requisite for the particular course or activity; by utilizing part-time, and retired, personnel to the maximum extent practicable; by encouraging volunteer, or barter, time by parents that have free time; etc. To limit individual teacher job time, the school can be operated in hour and day shifts. With three terms per calendar year, teachers who prefer to continue to teach only nine months per year can still be accommodated. The need for substitute teachers may be reduced by the more flexible availability of regular teachers.
Obviously, the ability to institute all of the above proposals will depend on size of school and location. The greatest need and the greatest ability will be in large urban schools.
A critical controversy has been raging, as to the organization of American education, or what role should be played by each interested party, from federal government down to the individual school. We will attack that issue in the next Responsibility paper.
Publius IV
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