WASHINGTON — Is it permitted to say a kind word (or at least a less-condemnatory one) about the teachers who allowed nine District of Columbia middle-school boys to be strip-searched at the local jail?
Of course it was an awful thing to do — maybe stupid and illegal as well. But doesn’t it matter what the teachers and their jailhouse partners in the caper were trying to accomplish?
These teachers aren’t demons. They were, according to Dorothy Simpkins, the in-school suspension coordinator who organized the May 17 jail visit, trying to show these Evans Middle School youngsters where their misbehavior, if unchecked, was likely to lead them. The hope was that, given a glimpse of the "real world," the kids would be "scared straight."
Now it appears more likely that the youngsters will collect hefty damages from D.C.’s struggling school system and that it is the teachers who’ll be scared to try anything not preapproved, centrally ordained and certified action-proof to grab the attention of children they fear may be headed the wrong way.
I can’t tell you anything about the particular children involved in this unfortunate matter. But I can tell you the discipline problem their teachers face is all too real, and that it is worse among those already at greatest risk of failure in school and in life: the children of low-income parents themselves unsuccessful in both arenas.
These are the children for whom the much-maligned public schools may represent the last best hope. And many of them are floating through school without learning much of anything — and behaving so badly that it’s hard for anyone else to learn much. These children require better teaching, improved curricula, smaller classes and all the things we keep saying they need, including love. But they also need discipline.
They do not, I hardly need add, need strip searches, or to have their body cavities checked for contraband.
On the other hand, should the teachers responsible for the poor judgment and the jail employees who, without a doubt, got carried away in their attempt to cooperate with what the teachers were attempting, be dismissed out of hand? Two managers at the jail have been suspended, and a deputy warden has resigned under pressure. Some teachers and administrators may be in danger of losing their jobs.
What strikes me about this whole episode is that, so far as I can see, all the adults involved were trying to do something helpful for the children. That isn’t always the case. What happens far more frequently is that instead of trying to change the behavior of the troublemakers, schools bend their efforts toward protecting the rest of the student body from the undisciplined ones.
The Chicago Tribune recently reported on a middle school in suburban Kane County, Illinois, that handles discipline problems another way. This academic year alone, Carpentersville Middle School has handed out 493 suspensions — disproportionately to black and Hispanic students.
The school has its problems, including physical violence that led to at least a third of the suspensions. But the suspension rate — roughly one for every two pupils in the school — hardly suggests any serious effort to help the children who are seen as causing the trouble.
It’s fair to say few troubled school districts in America — not just Washington and Kane County — have figured out what to do about rampant disciplinary problems. Laxity exacerbates the matter, zero-tolerance breeds disrespect for authority. Rules that are fair on their face tend to be interpreted in ways that don’t seem fair. And the ruckus-causing children don’t seem to respond to the gentle discipline you used with your own little darlings.
I’ve never much believed in the efficacy of the whole Scared Straight approach, instituted a quarter-century ago at Rahway State Prison and popularized in a TV documentary a short time later. And I certainly don’t believe in strip-searching children in an effort to make the experience more like real life. By my lights, what happened at D.C. Jail in May amounts to child abuse.
But the way we’ve been responding to the affair may lead to a greater abuse: teachers giving up on troubled children and just turning their backs.
At least those teachers and jail officials were trying.
William Raspberry can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or willrasp@washpost.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
