Newspaper Page Text
— Griffin Daily News Thursday, Septembers, 1977
Page 16
Problems
Discipline is one of greatest difficulties in today’s public schools
Ask a parent, teacher or
educational administrator to
list the major problems of
today’s public school systems
and discipline is sure to be high
on the list. According to Joe
Edwards, deputy superin
tendent of Georgia schools, the
latest Gallup survey of parents
and educators cites disciplinary
difficulties as the number one
problem in the nation’s schools.
Recent approval of corporal
punishment in the schools by
the U.S. Supreme Court, as well
as the continuing vocal con
troversy over its probable ef
fectiveness, shows that parents
and educators are very con
cerned about maintaining order
in the schools. But Edwards
does not see “the paddle” as
the most effective or the sole
means of maintaining
discipline.
According to Edwards, the
most frequently mentioned
cause of discipline problems in
the schools is students’ lack of
interest in the work. Edwards
says that schools must expand
their offerings in order to
provide appropriate in
structions for those
disniterested students.
“All children are not
academically oriented and
interested in academic cour
ses,” says Edwards. “I don’t
believe we should water down
our academic training to suit
the non-academic students. We
should provide vocational
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Back to school
WASHlNGTON—Accompanied by a Secret Service agent,
Amy Carter, daughter of President and Mrs. Carter,
arrives at Stevens Elementary School for the first day of
classes Wednesday. Amy, who will be 10 on Oct. 19, will be
starting the fifth grade at the public school. (AP)
Discover
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training for these people; first,
so they can be employed when
they finish school and, second,
so they will be able to enroll in
courses in which they have
some goal, in which they can
achieve and in which their in
terests lie.”
Edwards praises the com
prehensive high school concept
for providing both academic
and vocational education and
thus better meeting the needs
of a variety of students. He
expresses hopes that the con
cept will be more widely
adopted.
SOLVING THE PROBLEM
But, what else can be done
with disorderly students?
Corporal punishment,
suspension and expulsion are
said to be not very successful
methods for coping with
classroom disruptors. Indeed,
suspension and expulsion are
said to compound the problem
by removing the student from
adult supervision, including
that of working parents,
resulting in failing grades and
premature termination of
schooling. Too often the
problem student goes on to be
an unemployed dropout or
criminal.
In-house suspension and
alternate schools are 2
disciplinary measures being
tried in Georgia public schools.
Both consist of removing
disruptive students from the
classroom, as in suspension and
expulsion, but maintain
classroom work and adult
supervision. In-house
suspension assigns disruptive
students to a separate
classroom within the school.
The alternate school system
assigns them to a central
building.
The Houston County school
system employs the alternate
school program. Hubert Hut
cherson, assistanty superin
tendent for instruction, says the
program has provided a suc
cessful disciplinary alternative
to Houston school staffs.
Students punished with in
house suspension or assignment
to alternate schools are isolated
from their classmates and not
allowed to participate in ex
tracurricular activities. They
are required to complete work
assignments sent them by their
regular teachers. Their day is
very much regulated and
requirements are strict, says
Hutcherson.
On the other hand, individual
attention and counseling are
provided the students by a staff
of 2 teachers, 2 para
professionals and a full-time
guidance counselor. Basic in
struction in English,
mathematics, science and
social studies helps to remedy
academic deficiencies which
may have contributed to
discipline problems. Individual
conuseling about disruptive
behavior by the guidance
counselor attempts to help
students understand their
problems and seek more ap
propriate ways to express
themselves, as well as modify
their classroom behavior.
Hutcherson claims Houston
County schools have ex
perienced a decrease in
disciplinary problems as a
result of the program. Not
many students repeat the
Educator sees gains
in status of disabled
By CONNIE GRZELKA
AP Newsfeatures Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Chil
dren gaped. Sales clerks ig
nored her and shoppers either
fussed over her or moved on to
another counter when a dis
abled woman in a wheelchair
visited a shopping center here
on a busy weekend.
The woman, however, was
not truly disabled. Carrying a
concealed tape recorder, she
was one of Dr. Shirley Cohen’s
students on an assignment to
simulate a handicapped person;
“At the end of the tape, you
could tell how she was ready to
break down after less than a
day of these reactions,” Dr. Co
hen says. “So you can imagine
what it’s like for disabled per
sons who have been ex
periencing this for years.”
Dr. Cohen, 40, director of the
special education development
center at the City University of
New York, and assistant pro
fessor of education at Hunter
College, is the author of the
recently published “Special
People.”
While her book views the
long-term and everyday prob
lems faced by the handicapped,
as well as medical and tech
nological advances, Dr. Cohen
also explains why society fears
the disabled.
In an interview here, the 5-
foot-1 professor explained that
although the handicapped have
been making headlines because
most of the provisions of “The
Education of All Handicapped
Children Act of 1975” are now
going into effect in the nation’s
schools, “there’s still a lot of
isolation.”
The new law, which Dr. Co
hen speaks of as the “Bill of
Rights for Handicapped Chil
dren,” mandates that disabled
youngsters can no longer be ex
cluded from the public educa
tion system.
As the laws are enforced, she
notes, “we’re going to come
into closer contact with the
handicapped. As children in the
schools are exposed to those
with disabilities at an earlier
age, they won’t perceive them
as strange.”
Most people had no contact
with disabled persons when
they were young, and parents’
attitudes often encouraged their
children to be afraid of the
handicapped because they are
different, she maintains.
Dr. Cohen says her own
daughter expressed a fear of
“catching handicap germs”
from a disabled person when
she was 5. “This fear of ‘handi
cap germs’ is a common feel
ing, not just among children,
but with adults as well — it’s
just not put into words.
“We still have a long way to
go. We’ve made progress in
casual relationships, but other
findings show that we still re-
alternate school, and some
improvements in their ad
justment to the school en
vironment has been noted by
the students’ regular teachers.
The in-house suspension and
alternate school programs also
include in-service training of
administrators, teachers and
para-professionals to help them
better understand the problems
of unruly students. The staff
also learns ways of coping with
troublemakers in a more
positive manner. Staff
development programs em
phasize positive reinforcement,
resolution of classroom con
flicts through mutual problem
solving and avoidance of
communications which anger,
embarrass or damage a
student’s self-respect.
WORKING FOR STAFF
Trying another angle, the
Hogansville City school system
has instituted “transactional
analysis” workshops for its
staff. The approach involves
the analysis of interpersonal
relationships. The purpose of
the workshops is to help school
staff members learn to seek the
roots of a student’s problem
rather than deal merely with
symptoms.
“A major problem in the
schools,” says Louis E.
Brummet, superintendent of the
Hogansville City system, “is
that relations between students
and teachers are all too often
superficial. They are based on
an authoritative relationship of
teacher over student rather
than mutual trust and respect.
Consequently, teachers, per
ceive student misbehavior as a
defiance of authoriity rather
than a manifestation of a
student’s psychological pain.”
As an example, Brummet
cites the teacher who orders
“Pay attention!” to a
kV II
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' '■
SHIRLEY COHEN
ject intimacy and fear close
ness with people who have a
disability.”
The growing militancy of the
handicapped was somewhat
threatening to professionals in
the field at first, she said. But
these groups are now accepted
as civil rights interests just
coming for their due and are no
longer just viewed as angry
people, Dr. Cohen adds.
“Many of them are old and
there’s a chance that if most
members of the population live
past 65, they’ll be handicapped
later in life, so it’s everybody’s
problem,” she says.
Ten per cent of the popu
lation is handicapped, accord
ing to the educator, who has a
doctorate in developmental psy
chology from Columbia Univer
sity. She notes that 8 million
are children between the ages
of 1 and 21.
After spending 18 years in the
special education field, Dr. Co
hen points to many changes
that have occurred over those
years, particularly the end of a
teacher shortage and more at
tention to the disabled:
“We probably have more
bright young teachers than
ever before. In the past, such
schools were buried in base
ments and out of the way, but
are coming into the mainst
ream now.
“In the old days, the field
was functioning at a low level.
There were more vacancies for
teachers and even a stigma at
tached to such a teaching posi
tion.”
She also cites important tech
nological advances including an
electric wheelchair with mouth
controls for quadriplegics, cal
culators with a talking output
for the blind and the elec
tronically operated myoelectric
arms, activated by tiny electric
impulses from the person’s
existing muscles.
All of these devices represent
a kind of “breakthrough” to
make life more liveable for the
handicapped, Dr. Cohen says.
daydreaming student. The
student is embarrased and
angry at being singled out and
responds disrepectfully. The,
teacher feels that the student is
defying authority and seeks to
exert more authority. A major
confrontation results.
“I’ve seen many problems
which began as simple
situations end up in the prin-
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cipal’s office,” says Brummet.
“Transactional analysis helps
teachers learn to recognize a
problem and defuse a poten
tially explosive situation rather
than escalate tension, anger
and conflict.”
Brummet says the tran
sactional analysis workshops
are the direct cause of the
highly positive attitude being
displayed by teachers at the
beginning of this school year.
He hopes teachers will not only
use the method in coping with
classroom disturbances but wil l
also teach transactional
analysis to their students so
they, too, will know better how
to handle interpersonal
relationships.
Georgia schools are tackling
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the problem of discipline from a
variety of angles. Whether the
technique deals directly with
the student, as in alternative
schools, or with the staff, as
intransactional analysis, the
aims are the same. “We must
accept the fact,” says Deputy
Superintendent Edwards, “that
we cannot let one unruly child
disrupt the learning process of
25 or 30 other children.”
