Judging School Discipline: The Crisis of Moral Authority

by Richard Arum, Jennifer Thompson (Contribution by), Irenee R. Beattie (Contribution by), Richard Pitt (Contribution by), Sandra Way (Contribution by)

Overview

Reprimand a class comic, restrain a bully, dismiss a student for brazen attire—and you may be facing a lawsuit, costly regardless of the result. This reality for today's teachers and administrators has made the issue of school discipline more difficult than ever before—and public education thus more precarious. This is the troubling message delivered in Judging School Discipline, a powerfully reasoned account of how decades of mostly well-intended litigation have eroded the moral authority of teachers and principals and degraded the quality of American education.

Judging School Discipline casts a backward glance at the roots of this dilemma to show how a laudable concern for civil liberties forty years ago has resulted in oppressive abnegation of adult responsibility now. In a rigorous analysis enriched by vivid descriptions of individual cases, the book explores 1,200 cases in which a school's right to control students was contested.

Richard Arum and his colleagues also examine several decades of data on schools to show striking and widespread relationships among court leanings, disciplinary practices, and student outcomes; they argue that the threat of lawsuits restrains teachers and administrators from taking control of disorderly and even dangerous situations in ways the public would support.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674018143
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/30/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Richard Arum is Professor of Sociology and Education at New York University.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Questioning School Authority

2. Student Rights versus School Rules
With Irenee R. Beattie

3. How Judges Rule
With Irenee R. Beattie

4. From the Bench to the Paddle
With Richard Pitt and Jennifer Thompson

5. School Discipline and Youth Socialization
With Sandra Way

6. Restoring Moral Authority in American Schools

Appendix: Tables

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

This interesting study casts a critical eye on the American legal system, which [Arum] sees as having undermined the ability of teachers and administrators to socialize teenagers...Arum, it must be pointed out, is adamantly opposed to such measures as zero tolerance, which, he insists, often results in unfair and excessive punishment. What he wisely calls for is not authoritarianism, but for school folks to regain a sense of moral authority so that they can act decisively in matters of school discipline without having to look over their shoulders.

Teacher Magazine - David Ruenzel

Judging School Discipline provides a carefully detailed prescription for what needs to be done about one of the most critical and potentially alarming problems in our schools—the lack of student discipline. Order in schools rests not on policies like zero tolerance, but on how schools prepare their students for learning that involves trust, rules and fairness. This excellent book should be read by anyone interested in improving student learning and the institutions designed to promote it.

Contexts - Barbara Schneider

[Arum] argues that discipline is often ineffective because schools' legitimacy and moral authority have been eroded. He holds the courts responsible, because they have challenged schools' legal and moral authority, supporting this claim by examining over 6,200 state and federal appellate court decisions from 1960 to 1992. In describing the structure of these decisions, Arum provides interesting insights into school disciplinary practices and the law.

Choice - P. M. Socoski

[Arum's] break with education-school dogma on student rights is powerful and goes far toward explaining why so many teachers dread their students—when they are not actually fighting them off.

Wall Street Journal - Heather MacDonald

Arum's careful analysis of school discipline becomes so focused and revealing that the ideological boundaries of the debate seem almost to have been suspended. The result is a rich and original book, bold, important, useful, and—as this combination of attributes might suggest—surprising...Many years in the making, Judging School Discipline weds historical, theoretical, and statistical research within the problem-solving stance of a teacher working to piece together solutions in the interest of his students. The result is a book that promises to shape research as well as practice through its demonstration that students are liberated, as well as oppressed, by school discipline.

Urban Education - Steven L. VanderStaay

Arum's book should be compulsory reading for the legal profession; they need to recognise the long-term effects of their judgments on the climate of schools and the way in which judgments in favour of individual rights can reduce the moral authority of schools in disciplining errant students. But the author is no copybook conservative, and he is as critical of the Right's get-tough, zero-tolerance authoritarianism as he is of what he eloquently describes as the 'marshmallow effect' of liberal reformers, pushing the rules to their limits and tolerating increased misconduct.

Times Educational Supplement - John Dunford

[Arum's] break with education-school dogma on student rights is powerful and goes far toward explaining why so many teachers dread their students--when they are not actually fighting them off.

Wall Street Journal - Heather Macdonald

Arum's careful analysis of school discipline becomes so focused and revealing that the ideological boundaries of the debate seem almost to have been suspended. The result is a rich and original book, bold, important, useful, and--as this combination of attributes might suggest--surprising...Many years in the making, Judging School Discipline weds historical, theoretical, and statistical research within the problem-solving stance of a teacher working to piece together solutions in the interest of his students. The result is a book that promises to shape research as well as practice through its demonstration that students are liberated, as well as oppressed, by school discipline.

Urban Education - Steven L. Vanderstaay