Comment Re:Hard to take sides (Score 1) 355
I taught middle school and high school for a little while, and my experience jibes with what you say. I think it works like this.
In a class of 30, there are 1 or 2 pathological miscreants—basically, irredeemable troublemakers who need another environment (whatever that may be). Then, there are about 6 kids who need only those troublemakers as a catalyst for them to become troublemakers as well. On the other side of the coin, there are 5 or 6 kids who are model students in terms of behavior. The rest are mere ballast.
I've seen where throwing merely 1 kid out of class—permanently—and then cracking down on the rest can turn an entire class around and make it manageable. But if you can't get rid of that 1 or maybe 2 kids, there's a good chance that class is lost.
The great tragedy in American education is that we are willing to cheat so many students out of an education because we cater to the very few who don't deserve an education.