Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear

4 Teaching to the Rules

117 4 Teaching to the Rules I could hear Mr. Wade talking loudly outside the ISS room: “You don’t have to like her but you have to respect her enough to let her teach the rest of the class.” His tone was very firm. I could hear a female voice arguing with him (it was Jade). Mr. Wade: If she tells you to stand on one leg, you stand on one leg. Jade: No I don’t! They continued to argue back and forth. Mr. Wade: Well, who is right then? She’s right. Jade: She’s wrong! Mr. Wade: You’re the one that’s going to suffer, you’re the one that’s going to fail. Jade said something about not liking the teacher, to which Mr. Wade replied, “It’s not about who you like and don’t like, it’s about what you do and don’t do.” Mr. Wade: She has the final say. She’s the only one that has a say. Jade: I hate her . . . I hate her guts. (FN) This conversation between Jade, a black female freshman at Centerville High, and Mr. Wade, a black interventionist, illustrates an important dynamic I observed regularly at each school: that following school rules and reinforcing the school’s authority are themselves the primary achievement of school discipline, not inducing behavioral changes in students or solving students’ problems. These may not be the goals that are laid out in the schools’ mission statements or codes of conduct, and school staff may not be aware that this is how they enforce school rules, but these goals were clear in most rule-enforcement situations I observed throughout my research. Contemporary school discipline puts such a high priority on the 118 | Teaching to the Rules school rules that they often are pursued above even pedagogic goals when the two compete for attention.1 This pursuit of rule adherence and maintenance of authority mirrors what others have called “teaching to the test,” when schools structure their curricula to prepare students for standardized exams. In extreme cases, this means teaching only courses directly related to the tests (often only English and math), at the expense of other subjects (e.g., social studies, physical education , science). Critics of teaching to the test argue that by teaching only material likely to appear on the exams, schools encourage rote memorization and fail to teach students critical-thinking skills.2 School discipline follows a similar pattern, since rules are enforced in a way that teaches students only how to abide by rules but not how to resolve conflict, solve their own problems , or correct their behaviors. Jade, for example, is taught that she needs to stop arguing because she can’t win, with no discussion about what actually happened that made her upset or how she could resolve her conflict with her teacher. She apparently feels that she is treated unfairly and wants to be listened to, but instead she is taught that she must follow school rules and obey the teacher’s authority—end of story. Given the parallel between school discipline and “teaching to the test,” I call this “teaching to the rules.”3 When considering the powerful socializing function of schools, the importance of teaching to the rules is apparent. Students do learn from this process, but the content of what they learn is disconcerting: they learn a model of citizenship that is at odds with a democratic ethos, as they become socialized to accept authority and to follow rules uncritically. Teaching to the rules also means that we miss out on opportunities to teach children conflict resolution and behavior management skills. Actual Problems Go Unaddressed Teaching to the rules happens in a variety of different ways, but it characterizes rule enforcement in most situations across the four schools in this study, despite the differences between them. One important characteristic of teaching to the rules is that students’ actual problems go unaddressed, since these problems are secondary to rule enforcement.4 For example, consider the following field notes, describing how a black student, Heather, enters the office of a black male administrator at Centerville High to ask for a tissue. It is clear Teaching to the Rules | 119 that she has been crying, but instead of discussing her problem the administrator lectures her on the dress code: Heather entered Mr. Morris’s office and asked if he had a...