Yelling isn't the only form of discipline. There's withholding privileges. There's physical restraint even. Without cooperation from parents, school staff can't really do either. A teacher I know tells me how some of the violent elementary school children just get put in a room alone when they are having an episode because that's all they are allowed to do. These children (under 12 years old) have sent teachers to urgent care with injuries, and the kids are let back to school not long after.

physical restraint and discipline addresses a symptom, not the cause — if discipline worked the US wouldn't have outrageously high prison population and recidivism rates

The US justice system isn't discipline. It's punishment. Discipline isn't just giving consequences for actions, but it's also giving tools to choose better actions.

On that I agree, but specifying "discipline" for the average person often means punishment only. This is why the prison system is the way it is... no one wants to pay for things that benefit the prisoners, just the punishment.

This is why if I had to teach I would teach college kids. I don’t want to be a therapist and bear the weight of all parents’ failures. I want to teach math. So if to be a public school K-12 teacher you have to also “model” how to be a functional human (as the kids go home and see the opposite) then I would never accept that job.

I was raised by a single mom who worked a million hours and didn’t have a baby sitter when I let myself in after school. Don’t see how “working too many hours and being stressed” is a new phenomenon because most of my extended family is poor and have always been. My mom told me not to steal and don’t be an obnoxious asshole in school, wasn’t exactly rocket science.

While (as a former math teacher, btw) I sympathize with you, let me point out that absolutely every teacher should "model how to be a functional human" (and in fact does, better or worse). This is true for every stage of education, from kindergarten to a university.

Discipline does work; it's ultimately what the 'bad' kids get when they have runins with the criminal justice system.

The lack of discipline from the parents, mentors, and teachers early on is why the State has to do it later. Discipline is not orthogonal to 'help'.

> Discipline does work; it's ultimately what the 'bad' kids get when they have runins with the criminal justice system.

…and does that work? Recidivism rates would suggest otherwise.

Considering a large experiment has just occurred with progressive prosecutors no longer putting criminals in jail, and the SF prosecutor was recalled and a tough-on-crime mayor was elected in NYC, I think the results are that “throwing criminals in jail” works better than not.

As an NYC resident I can assure you in at least one of those examples you are vastly, vastly oversimplifying matters.

Both examples are silly and bad. Alameda County (Oakland) elected a tough on crime DA at about the same time as SF’s “reform” one and their crime rate increased more than SFs in that period.. there are no easy answers in policing or discipline.

Yes the “crime rate” when no one goes through the hassle to report petty crimes because it’s a pain in the ass and they won’t solve it anyway. The stats are a joke and everyone knows it.

Yeah except for this conversation, we're clearly talking about violent crime which increased in Oakland at a rate far greater than it did in SF.. and I can't imagine your contention that the people of San Francisco are less likely to report violent crime compared to people living 10 miles away..

To be fair, theres no way to reliably control for the affect of the da without a parallel universe with a weak on crime oakland da. Especially when certain violent crimes like murder are so rare in the population to begin with where a single multiple shooting event could skew things significantly year over year.

Yep. No argument there. Which definitely cuts both ways though. The 'weak on crime' DA in SF was lambasted and ultimately recalled for a crime spike that was smaller in magnitude than the crime spike in much of the country in areas with all manner of DAs and Policing policies.

If you want to treat crime through a disease model, then you should quarantine the infected and prevent transmissions, eg by them victimizing more people.

Somehow, that part of medicine never makes it into these “alternatives” — which makes claims of “systems thinking” or “crime as disease” sound like shallow pretenses for performative virtue rather than legitimate considered policy.

At no point did I say I wanted to treat crime through a disease model so your "shallow pretense" dismissal feels out of place.

All I'm saying is that it's pretty obvious jailing criminals is incredibly expensive and not particularly effective at reducing future crime.

I'm not going to be able to convince you otherwise if this is a strongly held belief, but once a kid (or anyone) is in the criminal justice system they're pretty much doomed. I've seen this time and time again, it's all punishment and very little help. We literally enslave inmates in some states, they're picking cotton on former slave plantations. We need to get over this concept of punishment only.

> Discipline is not orthogonal to 'help'.

Yes, but discipline alone will never work. Never has.

>> We need to get over this concept of punishment only.

And replace it with what?

Depends on the circumstances. If someone gets a life sentence, then it's probably not a benefit to society to work on rehabilitation. If someone gets 5 years or so for a non-violent offense, then perhaps providing resources that foster hope of permanent change could benefit society rather than derail them from society entirely just to punish them. That can be a balance many factors, such as a display of discipline through good behavior in jail/prison, work release, learning a skill/trade so one can get a job to support themselves (the primary precursor to being a benefit to society), and some sort of job placement assistance or at least the removal of so many barriers.

Some of these exist to some degree already. Some of the issues are systemic and not just related to those in prison. For example, the decline of real wages over the past 50 years and the rise of barriers to entry for many things (renting, jobs, etc) has made it difficult for lower skilled individuals to succeed. If you feel you have no hope in the system, then you will be more inclined to act outside the system.

None of this is an excuse for someone to break the law, merely an observation that the current system might not be maximizing societal benefits but rather too focused on punishment alone.

Rehabilitation. We need to help people understand why they're constantly angry and impulsive, it can not be beaten out of them. For some people this can take a lifetime of mental health counseling.

I've seen irate voters at town meetings upset that tax dollars were being using to pay for books and tutoring for inmates, let alone mental health counseling. As a country the US is incredibly far off from the mindset of prisoner rehabilitation. We treat prisoners like animals, and for some reason are surprised when they keep acting like animals.

Or you can teach the normal kids how to defend themselves and unite against the bully.

The justice system is punishment. Proper disciplining would help foster discipline in the individual with teaching and guidance on how to make good choices and conform with those consistently.

'“bad” kids don’t need discipline, they need help'

Some would argue that disciplining is helpful in many cases. Proper disciplining is not just punishment but should include an explaination of why what they did was wrong and what the right thing to do is.

Kids having discipline is a slightly different topic, but can be partially built through the process above.

Discipline without love or some care starts to look like authoritarianism, so if you're not careful you can instill a strong sense of oppositional defiance and make things worse.

This is a very difficult problem to solve and people will often support the stick and complain that someone doesn't deserve the carrot. Everyone needs both.

A friend taught public school in a poorer area outside of DC for about 8 years until moving into admin. He had one tactic that worked for many "bad" kids - call their parents, in the middle of the class if need be. He said today's young teachers, are non-confrontational and not used to verbal communication over phones as they were raised on social media and texting. So those young teachers sit there helpless while the student runs wild.

Now in admin hes some kind of teacher manager and he had teachers come to him, sometimes physically crying, unable to deal with a child with a behavioral problem. His says 99% of the time these problems are corrected with a single phone call to the parents. Just one call but no - young teachers these days don't have the guts or social wherewithal. So his job is now teaching adults how to make phone calls.

Another thing to realize is a lot of these kids do respond positively to teachers when they show them that they care and aren't there to simply baby sit and yell at them. He has had many students come to him later on thanking him for breaking their balls and setting them on the right path. Kids aren't stupid - they want respect but are treated like little monsters to be corralled and controlled like cattle.

Showing the kids you truly care is incredibly powerful for them - it connects at the human emotional level and those positive interactions boosts the kids moral and they feel more confident or centered in life.

Agreed, but teachers can't be expected to be the only ones providing this help.

Other public institutions outside the school system need to be in place to support the parents who are stressed and overworked and barely have time to parent.

And their right to be helped stops at the line where they're causing harm to the learning of others.

Discipline in schools isn't and cannot be about holistically reforming the problem kids, it's about making sure those who want to learn can.

You can't dump the entirety of systemic poverty, racism, mental health, etc. on the education system and expect it to work well.

Yep, but also many schools in the US don't even have the basics AND they're getting all of that stuff dumped on them. Teachers are quitting at alarming rates since the pandemic. This is not being treated remotely like the emergency it is, and 10 years from now we're really going to feel it.