For decades, public schools slowly took on parental duties for students. Now they make it official by assigning teachers mommy and daddy training. Vallejo School District (VCUSD) names a current form of this training the Second Step.  The Committee for Children organization sells programs that teach social and emotional skills for violence prevention.  

It is hard to criticize attempts to socialize children in school behavior by teaching them how to control violent and unruly behavior. I don’t criticize the lesson, but I do disagree with assigning the responsibility to classroom teachers to do it.

Public school officials adopted a wrong institutional philosophy a few decades ago when they assumed parental responsibility for students. Then, they became permissive parents that decided the goal of meeting students’ emotional needs was primary and meeting their educational needs secondary. Worse, school officials allowed children to decide those emotional needs. The resulting dysfunction in schools and society should warn them to reverse direction. Instead, they move from one bizarre unworkable scheme to another treating the symptoms of the dysfunction.  

Children lack the life experiences to know their emotional needs or the best way to react to life. They need their parents and other adults to confirm what are scary events that require heavy emotional investment and what are only annoying events. Parents confuse children when they mostly react to what the child does or feels instead of setting a firm foundation of rules to direct the child’s conduct. Soon children accept they have deciding power and responsibility.   

Trying to baby-proof schools—change school routine to fit the child’s behavior—is school officials’ only alternative when they act as permissive parents to unruly students. We saw baby-proofing in action recently when VCUSD expanded the cafeteria and erected a fence around Vallejo High School to corral unruly, undisciplined students on campus. School administrators believe they solved a problem. However, they only followed the lead undisciplined rule breakers dictated to them and to the disciplined students who followed the rules.  

The classroom is not the right place to deal with students’ unruly conduct that is so severe schools need to give teachers special training to change it. This added responsibility consumes instruction time away from core subjects. A teacher otherwise qualified to teach core subjects may lack the background, temperament or desire to take on the responsibility for changing students’ behavior problems like bullying, anger, and disrespectful attitude. School districts are not likely to provide enough training for this responsibility in two-day or two-week training sessions.  

A Bronx High schoolteacher decided in the New York Times that a good middle schoolteacher needs to know how to channel students' anger into class work and whether inappropriate questions such as “Are you gay” merits serious discussion or feigned deafness. This type comment shows that many teachers and administrators do not even understand the true nature of the teacher/student relationship. This is understandable, because many of them are the product to the public schools permissive parenting philosophy. 

The teacher should suspend the student from the classroom for they type disrespectful question she mentioned. The alternatives she suggested condone the student’s flippant, disrespectful inquiry about her private sex life. On the other hand, teachers cannot channel students’ anger into class work they do not understand because the school failed to teach them English-language and mathematics fundamentals in early grades.     

All teachers in a school district, preferably throughout the nation, should enforce the same age appropriate conduct standards. All but the students with severe behavior problems will comply with rules if they have no alternative. Teachers should not need special training to know how to enforce standard conduct rules.  

On the other hand, school districts cause confusion about conduct standards when they assign classroom teachers conflicting roles as counselors responsible to change unruly conduct. In one role they enforce uniform classroom standards for students socialized in school behavior. In the other role, they are counselors treating unruly student’s behavior problems. Persistently unruly conduct reveals symptoms of students failure to socialize to school behavior standards, just as a high temperature, pain and nausea are symptoms of physical illness. Like doctors, teachers as counselors must diagnose each student’s behavioral problems and deal with them accordingly. They cannot use one approach solves all problems if they are sincere.  

Programs like Second Step expect teachers to use books, films and compassion to change students’ unruly conduct. This general approach is not likely to work with the hard-core unruly students who break rules as a strategy to control their social environment.  

Schools should require all parents of suspended students, rather than teachers, to receive conduct modification training. This training will provide them more tools to help teach their children proper school conduct.

Kenneth Brooks is a freelance writer and speaker. Contact him at P.O. Box 882, Vallejo, CA 94590. E-mail to: opinion@ethicalego.com.