The generalized version of this is "take away something they care about". But it's not always easy to do. In many cases, schools have nothing the kids care about. If they do, rules often prohibit them from using it as leverage. And in many cases parents also are unwilling to apply any kind of consequence that would make their kid unhappy.
I want everyone to succeed as much as possible, I feel bad for such kids. But at that point, the kid won’t learn, won’t launch, there’s no benefit to keeping them in school and massive consequences for the good kids.
1) school education is mandatory until 16-18 in most countries, so what do you do with them once they get expelled. They have to be in education somewhere - so do you just put them in one school for all the expelled students, which is just constantly on fire? You made the problem much worse for yourself(as in - the state).
2) " there’s no benefit to keeping them in school and massive consequences for the good kids" - the massive consequences for kicking them out and not dealing with the problem are then on us, the society, because you get dysfunctional kids that got no help and just got kicked out instead. What kind of adults do you think they will grow into? Or is the answer "I don't care"?
Keeping them in school like it is done now, does not help them in any way, it merely transforms school from a place to learn into a mini prison where dysfunctional kids do not allow other kids to learn too.
15 year old who decides that he doesn't want to learn would be much better off if he gets expelled, goes to work at macdonalds, and comes back later, than the current situation where he gets to go to school and do nothing.
Also the mere possibility of being expelled and having to go to work will help many more children to keep studying.
>>Keeping them in school like it is done now, does not help them in any way
Well of course not, because schools don't have the support they need to help those students in turn.
>>goes to work at macdonalds
I don't know where you live where employing 15 year olds is legal, but even if we assume some kind of state where it's allowed, what mcdolands would employ a 15 year old that was expelled from school?
>>and comes back later,
How would that even work? You mean they enroll back at a private school to get their education? With what money?
The path isn't "well they get expelled so they just go to work" - most likely the path is that they just stay at home doing nothing all day if their parents let them, or they just turn to vagrancy/crime. No 15 year old is going to go "well I got kicked out of school so I better look for the most basic job" - it's some kind of unrealistic pipe dream of how society works.
But either way - you haven't really answered my question. In most places a child has to be in education until they turn 18. So when you kicked them out of school at 15, what is the state supposed to do with them?
> You mean they enroll back at a private school to get their education?
I mean the money that government wastes keeping them in school while they are 15 and don't want to learn, can be given to them later when/if they decide to learn.
> most likely the path is that they just stay at home doing nothing all day if their parents let them.
That's up to the parent to decide: leave them at home, convince them to find a job, go to special school or a class for misbehaving children, go to trade school etc.
Those who turn to vagrancy/crime do it anyway, as they have enough time outside of school too.
> child has to be in education until they turn 18.
> employing 15 year olds is [not] legal
These are not physical laws given to us from above, these are rather misguided attempts by politicians to look good, and are harmful to the society.
Imagine that instead of prisons we were forcing criminals to go spend time sitting in offices and disrupting normal work. What we do with children now is equally effective.
>>I mean the money that government wastes keeping them in school while they are 15 and don't want to learn, can be given to them later when/if they decide to learn.
So you want to financially incentivize kids to drop out of school? "Drop out now, we'll give you a bunch of money later".
>> these are rather misguided attempts by politicians to look good, and are harmful to the society.
Saying that keeping 15 year olds out of a job is harmful to the society is....certainly a take, for sure.
>>What we do with children now is equally effective.
Well, thank you for editing this sentence from what you wrote originally, but just to be clear - I'm not advocating that misbehaving kids should be forced to sit in normal classrooms and disrupt everyone else - rather that schools should be given the resources to deal with it - the school I went to had special classes for unruly kids which were much smaller and where you basically had to meet up with specialists every week and your grades were severely impacted. It does work in most cases. Sure there will be ones that are truly beyond any kind of help - but that is very very rare. Most of the time you just have kids who could get on the straight path if someone helped them, but public schools are usually so underfunded they can't help even if they want to.
> Drop out now, we'll give you a bunch of money later
Later they only get ability to sit at the same classes at the same public school, so there is no financial incentive.
15 year olds forced to sit in classes they don't want are way more miserable than those allowed to work and feel like adults. In any case people should be allowed to make choices by themselves not be forced by the government.
> the school I went to had special classes for unruly kids
That's a great solution too, and must be available option for parents. Sadly very few schools do that, making both unruly kids and good kids miserable as a result.
> schools should be given the resources
I don't think the problem is the lack of resources, specialist for helping unruly kids is not going to cost more than a math teacher. The problem is that most schools are simply opposed to the idea of splitting students based on their ability and willingness to study. As a result they have a system that harms everyone involved.
>>Later they only get ability to sit at the same classes at the same public schoo
I have to ask, what public school would accept adults taking classes along the rest of 15 year olds?
>> In any case people should be allowed to make choices by themselves not be forced by the government.
I'm sorry, but kids/teenagers are generally not allowed to make these choices, for good reasons. If you're an adult, then sure, do whatever. But kids should be in school, whether they like it or not - it's really not their choice to make. We can argue that maybe 15-16 year olds are at the cusp of being able to do this - but I'd say the cut off should stay at 18. You're under 18, you go to school. There's no other option. The question is how does the state manage this.
>>The problem is that most schools are simply opposed to the idea of splitting students based on their ability and willingness to study.
And I agree that it's an awful thing(that the schools are unwilling to do this)
I went to school at 6 years, our schools were for 10 years, and at 16 i went to university. At the university with us were some 20 year olds, who went to school at 7 years, were not able to get to university in their 17, were drafted to army at 18 and came back. 20 year old being around 16-17 year olds did not cause any catastrophe.
20 year old who wants to study is not going to cause any problem for the public school either, it will even be beneficial for the class as children will see that studying is useful.
> teenagers are generally not allowed to make these choices, for good reasons
When they are not allowed to make choices, the parents are supposed to make choices for them, not corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.
>> the parents are supposed to make choices for them
Parents don't have any choice in this either. A child under 18 should be in full time education - there is nothing to choose, maybe except for the school they can be in.
>>20 year old being around 16-17 year olds did not cause any catastrophe.
I like that you shifted "adults with 15 year olds" to 20 year olds with 16-17 year olds.
That's a very fucked up thing to say, governments or random strangers from internet do not have a right to decide how parent raises his child. Do you even have a child?
> I like that you shifted "adults with 15 year olds" to 20 year olds with 16-17 year olds
It was just my own experience, if you want another example in early years of Soviet Union there were 40 year olds learning to read with 6 year olds.
And in general i don't see why any combination of ages should be a problem?
I do. And like I said, you as a parent have a choice about the kind of school you send your child into. You don't have a choice whether they are in education or not.
>>And in general i don't see why any combination of ages should be a problem?
When you were at school were there many adult students in your classes?
>>you want another example in early years of Soviet Union there were 40 year olds learning to read with 6 year olds.
Yes, 100 years ago in the early days of the soviet union the classes were offered to everyone to increase literacy rates. I can assure you that throughout the rest of history of the soviet union you didn't have adults attending primary/secondary school, gymnasiums or other types of schools for children. Soviet union had schools for adults from very early on.
Laws like "do not kill", "do not steal", have been found long before politicians existed, by the natural selection of societies. That is groups of people who did not follow these laws were largely outcompeted by those who followed.
If you decide to break the law of "do not steal" in large extent you get millions dead like it have happened in communist Russia or Maoist China. If you break it in smaller extent (e.g. by very high tax) you get stagnant economy like in EU.
In contrast to that, the laws banning children to work were adopted at the point when children did not need to work, so they are largely irrelevant. If these laws existed in 18th century London or Paris they would cause many deaths too, since there was no other way to feed these children.
>I don't know where you live where employing 15 year olds is legal, but even if we assume some kind of state where it's allowed, what mcdolands would employ a 15 year old that was expelled from school?
I live stateside, and I've seen adverts saying they hire 14 year olds
> So when you kicked them out of school at 15, what is the state supposed to do with them?
That becomes the parents' problem. Let them find a school willing to take their abusive kid - or have the state come after them for having children not in school.
The threat of such should help encourage parents to actually raise decent children.
Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in mental institutions.
To be clear, abuse in these programs should be prevented as much as feasible, and there should be an opportunity for any kid who demonstrates redemption to get back in school.
It’s a bad solution, but I don’t know any which is better. Keeping them in society is worse for innocent people (and doesn’t seem to usually benefit them either, misbehaving kids usually seem miserable).
And yes, the state pays to take care of them. Otherwise it’s paying for the damage they cause outside.
> Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in mental institutions.
People with this mentality should never, ever be given any semblance of power. In almost every one of your comments you went to the extreme but "forced labor" and "committed to mental asylum" really take the cake.
> but I don’t know any which is better.
Are you genuinely wondering what's better, investing in prisons or in education? As far as I can tell your solutions involve making the problem worse by cutting the access to the only thing that could fix it (education), then building forced work camps and asylums to contain the now exploding problem.
The US stands proof that building more prisons doesn't lead to having fewer criminals. Education does. The first thing you thought of axing.
> Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in > mental institutions.
That was how NAZI-Germany and USSR (communist) governments 'solved' their problems.
In the USA, we had this president named Ronald Reagan who solved the mental institution problem: he closed all the mental institutions and expelled the patients so the patients live on the streets. That's really gave us a new influx of homeless people on a national scale, and it hasn't improved.
>>Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in mental institution
....what kind of work programs can you put 12 year olds into? I'm really curious.
And I'm sure it's clear that putting anyone into a mental institution costs the state far more than providing resources to a school to deal with this would cost? Psychologists, separate classes, teachers specialized in this. We struggle to put people with actual mental problems into mental health insititutions(because there are so few and they cost a fortune to run) but we'd start putting misbehaving kids in them?
12 year olds? My son was hammering nails into wood and drilling into masonry at 8. The Bedouin children are in the fields unsupervised with the goats at age 6. 12 year olds are not babies.
Both my daughters were skydiving at 9. Kids can do a lot.
>>My son was hammering nails into wood and drilling into masonry at 8
And was he doing that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? Like you know...he would do at work? Or was it just a nice thing he did with his parents helping out with some construction projects you had going on?
>>12 year olds are not babies.
Of course not, but then again I have to ask the same question once more - if you were in charge of national policy, what kind of work program would you establish for 12 year olds that misbehave at school? What would you have them do, exactly?
> And was he doing that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? Like you know...he would do at work?
No, he was doing it for maybe a few hours at a time, no more. He demonstrated capability.
> if you were in charge of national policy, what kind of work program would you establish for 12 year olds that misbehave at school?
I would not establish a work program for 12 year olds that misbehave at school. I would however ensure that there exist programs for 12 year olds who have proven that they can not function in the company of polite mannered society.
Ok, so answer the question then - what work program would there be for those 12 year olds that cannot function in the company of polite society. Like what kind of work would you have them do and how would you ensure compliance.
I don't have to answer the question because my goal is more the welfare of the remaining children in the school and less whatever happens to the bully. I really don't care what happens to them. Let their parents care. Let their parents find some solution. The more difficult that is, the better.
But someone has to answer. Saying "I really don't care what happens to them" is just such a lazy way out of this conversation. The whole problem is that we have to decide as a society what to do with them. You suggested work programs - great! Now give some examples of work programs you would put 12 years old in. If you can't or won't, then you have no more solution to this than someone who thinks having an idea equals having a business - it's precisely the execution that matters.
Btw. I am not advocating for work programs as a particularly good solution, expelling and letting the parents to figure out what to do with their misbehaving child is a good solution too. School is a privilege for smart children to study, not a prison for those who do not want to learn.
>> School is a privilege for smart children to study, not a prison for those who do not want to learn.
It's actually neither of those things, because we discovered hundreds of years ago that having an educated population is good for everyone. No, it's not a prison, but it's not a privilege either - you have to be in school until certain age. Work is not substitute for education.
Have an educated population does not mean that every last uncivilized brat needs to participate. Especially if he is distracting other people from acquiring an education.
Being in school does not make one educated. Keeping disruptive child in the same room with normal children, means we get fewer educated people, not more.
Everyone agrees on this, no one agrees on what "elsewhere" should be. Like I said in my post - do you just send them to one special school for unruly children, which is just basically on fire all the time? Or prison? Or like other commenters have said - just send them to work programs, let them work at mcdonalds, or send them to a mental institution? Like, we're not the first people on earth to come to this stunning conclusion that it would be better if bullies were taken away from the rest of the class - the question is where and how and if that is really the best solution for us, for them, for the victims and for the society at large.
Yes, that is a hard problem that society in general doesn't like dealing with, but the solution doesn't involve letting kids be abused. That's the point I'm making. Don't let kids get abused. I honestly didn't think that was very controversial.
Some dysfunctional kids are there because of trauma, others because of opportunism and poor impulse control they'll eventually grow out of, and some are fundamentally defective and no amount of support will make them less destructive or dangerous to themselves and others.
Psychopathy and narcissism are psychological/emotional disabilities. They're the emotional equivalent of being born without a limb - or in congenital cases, without the brain structures needed for empathy and adult risk management.
I don't know what to do with these people. No one does.
I do know they're the single biggest threat to our future as a species, because if they get into positions of power they wreak havoc on unimaginable scales.
And even if they don't, they reliably leave a trail of wreckage behind them, because their relationships are defined by lies, gaslighting, and emotional and physical violence.
Unfortunately we have limited tools for diagnosis, so there's no way to know for sure if a problem teen can be rescued, or if they're guaranteed to become a problem adult.
> They're the emotional equivalent of being born without a limb
For start we could stop cutting part of their limbs shortly after birth. Doing this to dogs is considered too cruel and banned, but somehow it is ok for little boys?
> some are fundamentally defective and no amount of support
They need real, tangible, meaningful threats. Corporal or social.
Doling out talkings-to, ISS, OSS, bad grades and repeat courses are a relative joke. I spent uncountable hours in ISS for truancy, was made to walk miles to school, kicked off the bus and walk miles home, served community service, and had many talkings-to. None of it was effective.
Expulsion is treated as far too extreme and should be far more regular as both an incentive to the student and to the parents. For many of these kids school is an impediment and a detractor and they would do far better for themselves in the work environment gaining experience over the course of the 3-4 years anyways. There are far more permissive environments in workplaces than there are in school that are better suited for the nature of certain inclinations and measures than that of school. There's also the possibility of restarting vocational education, which frankly, is a good compromise. But the current system is bullshit. And the bar is so low that diplomas are given out to nearly 90% of students which is flatly wrong as from what I've seen there are a lot more people who are either academically or behaviorally unsuited for employment or voting by any reasonable standard. Setting up clear failure modes are the guidelines by which many of these people would derive structure and meaning in their education, instead they're allowed a de minimis exception and passed into the world as acceptably educated and competent when the opposite is true. And that totally erodes the meaning of the accomplishment.
...the mentality that says schools should be given the resources to deal with it, instead of (like some other commenter suggested) sending kids to mental institutions?
The facts on the ground are that schools are not being given the resources to deal with it, leading to a death spiral of reduced enrollment and funding -- at least for SFUSD. I imagine the story is similar elsewhere.
If corporal punishment is effective then we don’t have to terminate anyone’s education. For some kids it may just take one painful lesson to turn them around so why forgo that and ruin their lives?
Certainly, if they also don’t care about physical punishment then expel them as a hopeless case but don’t do it reflexively as a cop out.
I think corporal punishment is fine as a last resort before expulsion. Not before, because I’m worried some kids would be traumatized, but those expelled or misbehaving indefinitely without consequence will otherwise find trauma and/or ruin other’s lives.
I guess (from my experience) the expelled kid is actually not that unhappy ;-) about being expelled, since very commonly it actually would prefer not having to go to school. :-)
It's a hard line to balance. In my younger years I should have absolutely been kicked out of school, but as I grew older and my hormones calmed me down, I then was a good student.
I really think I would have benefited from not having schooling for around a year though
You expel them and they become another person's problem. I heard recently of a local problem child aged seven. He's already been expelled from a private school but has entered a state school where he seriously injured another pupil and attempted to strangle one of the teachers.
Expulsion isn't going to reform them, it will just move it on elsewhere.
No this is not true. Expulsion works in many cases. The idea of getting expelled prevents a lot of problems. A lot of people avoid doing things that will get them expelled but this of course doesn't apply to everyone including the person in your example.
It's similar to how prison is a deterrent to crime. But it doesn't change the fact that there are people who still do crimes and get into prison.
Many unruly pupils have trouble at home, impoverished backgrounds, dyslexia, autism, social anxiety and a host of other things. Expelling them solves none of these things.
They may be bullies themselves because of an ongoing toxic culture in the school. That can include the teachers in some cases, who are some of the worst bullies in there. I had one who persecuted me for a speech impediment and humiliated me in front of an entire class of children by making me say tongue twisters.
> expel them and they become another person's problem
True, but we have institutions dedicated to dealing with people like that.
A school isn't that kind of institution and will fail in its mission (to protect and educate) if it tries to fill the role of controlling violent people.
Schools make some of these issues worse. They are riddled with bullying, and until recently made little accomodation to people with learning or social disabilities.
I can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse / sarcastic, but even aside from the ethical considerations here, prison is an insanely expensive way of dealing with the issue.
In the US in 2010, cost per inmate per year in a state prison ranges between $14,603 (Kentucky) and $60,076 (New York), and averages at $31,286. That's 16 years ago, so it'll be higher now. In the UK it was an average of £32,315 in 2020-21. You might as well employ an individual case worker, and the societal outcomes would be a hell of lot better.
I was quoted a figure of approx. £200,000 per year for each patient at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital by someone who works there but I can't vouch for it. I know someone who has been in there a year. :( Carstairs, where violent psychiatric patients go, is probably even more.
Sorry to hear that - I knew someone who was sectioned in the Royal Edinburgh about 30 years ago now. A really difficult place to visit emotionally. I can believe it's expensive given the kinds of difficulties the patients are experiencing.
Yes, it's some place. There are buildings lying empty (one had a Legionnaires' scare recently), and the grounds could be better but are run down. There are some mature trees that look good, but the bowling green has been ripped up as well. Morningside is a good area which is a mixed blessing as it means it may end up being developed.
As one of my friends remarked to me it's not a healing environment. The staff there, in my limited experience, vary a lot in their attitude. Some of them are great. Some not so much. It depends who you are dealing with.
Emotionally I’m all-in on painful punishments for bullies.
But when I stop, and think slower, and more rationally:
That bully is a human being who will grow up and he will be a neighbour to somebody (some will die, some will go to prisons, but most of them will be somebodies neibhours).
If we show him only more and more cruelty, he will be a terrible neighbour to somebody (so indirectly, the system made that somebodies life worse).
One anecdote of creative solutioning: to reduce vadalisations of waste bins in the village, teacher somehow convinced(maybe by promising bad grade if they don’t) several bully’ish kids to make baskets, to be used as waste bins.
Idea was that makers will feel some ownership for it, so they won’t damage it later and maybe even prevent lower ranking bullies as well.
The cases where the bully is truly irredeemable are few and far between. Most of the time the adults just abandon too quickly. Especially in school where teachers are stretched thin and have no “blood duty” to the child.
But more importantly, children who are abandoned “to save others’ suffering” grow up to be adults who can and will cause even more suffering. Education and care are like a debt, if you don’t service it early eventually everyone pays with interest.
Yes, which is why it’s a last resort, because some kids are lost either way.
And kicking them out of school isn’t yet abandoning them. They can be put into a vocational school: maybe some kids misbehave because they can’t sit still, but would behave and be happier following a simple job that involves moving.
Which is probably one of the biggest problem with the outsourcing of parenting for half their awake time that is happening with our established school system.
Not that I claim it is super easy to find an alternative on a large scale, but I think societies need to think hard about how to enable involving parents to be as much involved as possible in the kid's day. (For parents working full time shifts + commuting in a major city, this is very hard).
It should also be pointed out that children and teens especially benefit from a range of role models and mentors. Having the parent(s) provide 100% of the (life and academic) lessons is not actually ideal.
You say outsourcing, I say providing a range of different people to learn from. (It takes a village to raise a child…).
Not saying the current school system is perfect (it’s a rather dystopian “village”!), but keeping the teens locked up at home isn’t going to help.
I think you misunderstand the premise - in fact I struggle to understand how you interpreted the GP that way. No one is arguing that parents should provide 100% of life and academic lessons or that kids should be locked up at home, but that they, rather than schools, should have the leading role.
I took my kids out of school when they were eight or nine and up to 16 (the end of compulsory school age in the UK) my experience was that they met a wider range of people, and had a lot more freedom. Instead of being locked up at school they were free to do more on their own or with friends and to go to a wide range of classes and activities. They have done well academically (conditional offer from Oxford for one, the other starting a PhD later this year) and I was complimented regularly on their social skills when they were children, and this seems to be continuing as adults (and my older daughter now has work responsibilities that require soft skills - I would assume she would not have them if her managers had not observed her as having the skills).
The problem is not the involvement of other people, it is the outsourcing of responsibility and decision making and the main part of parenting. Parents are frequently little involved.
I think the village would be a healthy model for sure. But that is something that was pretty much killed in the modern society as well as most people, especially lower/mid-income workers in larger cities, are spending exceedingly little time of their day in their local neighborhoods.
Yeah exactly, it's hard to do and requires effort.
It's a sad state of affairs if there's nothing at school a child cares about, and rules prohibiting using those things as leverage may make sense in some way at a population level (to prevent misuse), but are clearly a bad idea in most individual cases.
Would be annoying for both the kid and the parents, more so than just detention at school I would think, and if parents are also annoyed will hopefully further incentivise socially appropriate behaviour of the child.
Of course if the parents manage to convince the principal or someone else to not enforce, then the problem is with the school.
