There was a time, about two decades ago, when having a police officer take up regular residence in a school’s halls would have been hard to imagine. Authority rested with the faculty, administration and staff and the kids knew it. Today, with roughly 17,000 police officers housed in each of our public school across the US, it’s become a question of how much authority is too much authority in an environment that is supposed to promote person growth, sociological development and the learning of facts and figures that will help our kids succeed.
The Purpose of School
As any teacher knows, kids come to school with varying attitudes about degrees of behavior, the purpose of their being in class and what they want from the experience. But, as any parent knows, that’s kids in a nutshell and it is the partial job of school faculty and administrators to guide them towards the answers to their questions of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable behavior and accountability while they learn the required curriculum. It is the ultimate goal of the school system to prepare these children with the tools they need to successfully participate in today’s society.
The Purpose of the Police
In any community, the goal of the police is to prevent law breaking, maintain order and arrest lawbreakers. Apply that purpose to a school setting that is supposed to nurture a child’s potential academically and socially. The clash of these two ideals has been seen in varying degrees in schools across the country.
In a school setting, they have been known to arrest kids for common, if unacceptable behavior, in order to handle the situation. In Chicago recently, 25 students were arrested for participating in a food fight in the school cafeteria. Although unacceptable, historically such a situation would have been handled by the school administration.
The question is then: What are the kids learning from being arrested? Some experts believe that if a child is treated like a criminal, they will eventually learn to behave like a criminal to fit their society’s (school) expectations.
Discipline and School
Ideally, discipline in school is meant as a lesson to be learned to better understand their actions and their effect. In the past, before the initiation of police in schools, the disciplinarian, sometimes a Vice Principal of the school, would take in hand the varying rule-breaking and behavior problems on a day to day basis, involving parents and other faculty when necessary.
Today, the outcome for a student’s misbehavior may depend on the school’s police rules resulting in the criminalization of common misbehaviors. When the administration abdicates too much control to the police on site when handling an incident, if they don’t have clear enough guidelines for the officer to follow, the resulting action may be left to the officer’s professional discretion.
Some unnerving facts are:
• Poor, ethnic or special needs students face a higher risk of arrest during an incident at school.
• Schools with zero-tolerance rules for behavior often have significantly more discipline actions during the year.
Learning is the Key
Consider the concept of accountability. Having a police officer take a hand in an event like damage of school property or a fight will not teach children accountability. However, having them do a month of community service on Saturdays or repairing the damage they have done will demonstrate the consequences of like behaviors, and give them the time to focus on how their behavior relates to the situations they experience.
What Can Be Done
There has to be a reevaluation of the purpose of police presence in school. Administration has to take an active role in any action that occurs and there need to be strict rules that allow for an arrest to be a part of the equation only as a last resort.
Parents need to be informed when an incident occurs that may result in an arrest, but all parties involved have to remember that the primary goal of school at all times is to teach, not punish.
Posted By: Paul Adams
Friday, February 26th 2010 at 3:11PM
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