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Re: [Phys-l] How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions - Response to Haim #2



At 17:36 -0700 01/27/2011, William Robertson wrote:

It's one alternative. I don't pretend to have the solution, but I have little compassion for people who are depriving others of their opportunity to advance and get out of their situation. You say you don't see anything changing in your lifetime, but if you reject solutions out of hand, then your prophecy is sure to come true.

Doesn't anyone think that students become disruptive for some deeper reason? I agree that most classroom teachers are either physically, mentally or educationally capable of dealing with such situations, but dealing with them simply as "disciplinary problems" is hardly an effective way to solve the problem. We have been using those methods for decades--no, centuries--without observable success. They need to be removed from class when they "act up," but expulsion or suspension is hardly a solution--it is sweeping a serious problem under the rug. We are really good at that. We let prisons deal with drug problems, with predictable results. We close our mental hospitals and allow the former inmates to become homeless, again, with predictable results.

To say that we need to expel disruptive students, is simply to provide fodder for the psychology/psiachiatry industry (which we then underfund, so they can shuffle those people off to the prisons, where we can forget about them).

It makes me proud to be a human.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
mailto:hugh@ieer.org
mailto:haskellh@verizon.net

It isn't easy being green.

--Kermit Lagrenouille