RIGHT REASON CAN LEAD TO WRONG ACTION

Is it permitted to say a kind word (or at least a less-condemnatory one)
about the teachers who allowed nine District of Columbia middle school boys
to be strip-searched at the local jail?

Of course it was an awful thing to do - maybe stupid and illegal as well.
But doesn't it matter what the teachers and their jailhouse partners in the
caper were [ital]trying[ital].to accomplish?

Those teachers aren't demons. According to the school official who
organized the jail visit, the teachers merely were trying to. show the
middle school youngsters where their misbehavior, if unchecked, was likely
to lead them.. The hope was that, given, a glimpse of the "real world," the
kids would be "scared straight."

Now, it appears more likely that the youngsters will collect hefty damages
from the District of Columbia's struggling school system and that it is the
teachers who will be seared to try anything not preapproved to grab the
attention of children they fear may be headed the wrong way.

I can't tell you anything about the particular children involved in this
unfortunate matter. But I can tell you that the discipline problem their
teachers face is all too real and that it is worse among those already at
greatest risk of failure in school and in life: the children of low-income
parents.

Those are the children for whom the much-maligned public schools may
represent the last best hope. And many of them are floating through school
without learning much of anything - and behaving so badly that it is hard
for anyone else to learn much. Such children require better teaching,
improved curricula, smaller classes and all the things we keep saying they
need, including love. But they also need discipline.

I hardly need to add that they don't need strip searches.

On the other hand, should the teachers responsible for the poor judgment -
and the jail employees who got carried away in their attempt to cooperate
with the teachers - be dismissed out of hand? Two managers at the jail have
been suspended, a deputy warden has resigned under pressure, and some
teachers and administrators may be in danger of losing their jobs.

What strikes me about this whole episode is that, so far as I can see, all
of the adults involved were trying to do something helpful for the
children. That isn't always the case. What happens far more frequently is
that, instead of trying to change the behavior of the troublemakers,
schools bend their efforts toward protecting the rest of the student body
from the undisciplined ones.

The [ital]Chicago Tribune[ital] recently reported on a middle school in
suburban Chicago that handles discipline problems another way. This
academic year alone, Carpentersville Middle School handed out 493
suspensions - disproportionately to black and Hispanic students. The
suspension rate - roughly one in every two pupils in the school - hardly
suggests any serious effort to help the children who are seen as causing
the trouble.

It is fair to say few troubled school districts in America have figured out
what to do about rampant disciplinary problems. Laxity exacerbates the
matter, while zero-tolerance breeds disrespect for authority. Rules that
are fair on their face tend to be interpreted in ways that don't seem fair.
And the ruckus-causing children don't seem to respond to the gentle
discipline you used with your own little darlings.

I never have believed in the efficacy of the whole Scared Straight
approach, instituted a quarter-century ago at Rahway State Prison and
popularized in a TV documentary a short time later. And I certainly don't
believe in strip-searching children in an effort to make the experience
more like real life.

But the way we have been responding to the affair may lead to a greater
abuse: teachers giving up on troubled children and just turning their
backs. At least those District of Columbia teachers and jail officials were
[ital]trying[ital].