Disruption

I taught in public high schools for almost forty years. I didn't have serious discipline problems in the classroom. When I introduced myself to a new class of 9^th grade US History students, I would tell them something like, "You've been in school for eight or nine years. You know the behavior teachers expect. If you misbehave, I'll assume you're doing it on purpose." I had very few behavior issues. I retired twenty years ago. I wonder whether that would work today. From "How Public Disorder Starts":

[Schools] are the institutions where we teach the next generation how shared spaces work.

Schools confront the dilemma of inclusion every day to a degree outsiders may not fully appreciate. They are less visible than churches and other spaces; you cannot wander into a school uninvited. Yet inside those walls, maintaining order has become increasingly difficult. Inappropriate student behavior has long been a chronic challenge in American schools, but many teachers report the problem has grown more acute in the years since the pandemic disrupted schooling and children’s social development. The RAND American Teacher Survey, for example, finds that teachers report increased classroom disruption and student misbehavior, with managing student behavior ranking among their top sources of job-related stress.

Disorder doesn’t arrive in schools as a single incident. It spreads gradually, and behaviors once considered unacceptable become tolerated, then normalized. Eventually, the culture of the school bends around accommodating disruption. When that happens, learning becomes secondary to managing chaos. Reflecting on my own experience teaching in a low-performing South Bronx elementary school in my book, How the Other Half Learns, I wrote:

A single disruptive child can bring a classroom to a halt. Put three or four such children in a single room and even minor misbehaviors can have a cascading effect, bleeding away a teacher’s time and attention and student learning. When multiple children with serious behavior problems share a classroom, a level of disorder can ensue that tests the patience and skill of all but the most gifted teachers. When those behaviors become common across classes and grades, an entire school soon groans under its weight.

This is not a mere philosophical concern. Surveys consistently rank student behavior issues among the leading reasons teachers leave the profession. Predictable consequences ensue: Teacher turnover destabilizes schools, instructional continuity disappears, and new teachers arrive unprepared for the conditions they encounter, with many leaving as quickly as they came. Over time, the institution itself begins to falter and fail to serve its primary purpose: educating children. Faced with these pressures, many schools have responded not by reasserting norms of order and academic purpose but by subtly redefining their mission. ....

Again from How the Other Half Learns:

When a school or teacher fails to engage or manage disruptive behavior, children are cheated. But who, exactly? The disruptive child who is suspended and excluded from class? Or the diligent student whose education bleeds away hour after hour, while her teacher responds to antisocial outbursts, or focuses on her classmate to prevent them? The weight of education policy and practice, as enshrined in impulse, empathy, and the law, comes down on the side of the disruptive child.

Schools occupy a unique place in this debate because they do more than simply reflect social norms—they help create them. Public transit works only when riders respect basic rules of conduct. Courts function only when citizens accept procedures and verdicts. Workplaces operate only when adults can tolerate standards and correction. Where do those habits come from? School. .... (more)

Robert Pondiscio, "How Public Disorder Starts," The Dispatch, March 26, 2026.