Definant behavior is increasing in some demographic areas, and seems to peak in secondary school. Often, disaffected or disadvantaged students are more defiant, sometimes due to that being the only psychological way they feel any control in their lives. Definance in the form of student conflicts exists, just as it would in the adult world, with the difference being that students do not yet have developed frontal-coretex areas, and therefore lose control more often. Understanding the link between psychological issues and definance often gives educators a better way to deal with individual problems (McFarland, 2001). This leads quite succinctly to the idea that a number of at-risk youth feel socially and culturally isolated. Being part of a culture means being nurtured and included; when that support is missing, especially during the formative years, the resulting isolation from others seems to increase the potential for cognitive dissonance, maladaptive behaviors and more dangerous emotional and psycho-social consequences as the child ages. We know many things about modern society, and starting in the 1960s educators began to seek more and more disenfranchised children in classrooms. The statistics are staggering; in 1996, in just the United States 700,000 students quit school, 500,000 give birth, and 24,000,000 live in poverty; 2,000,000 suffer from some from of abuse, and 7,000 commit suicide (Capuzzi and Gross, 1996). We can certainly extrapolate these figures into other societies and see that this is a major problem within the school. Neither children nor adults can learn, grow, and certainly they cannot actualize in an environment in which they are isolated. Their self-preservation mechanisms, in fact, tell them to flee or act aggressively out of protection. They view their environment as hostile and are unable...

It is important to take a very proactive role, enlisting the school counselor, every available social and psychological resource available, to interceed in these issues. Studies show that often if teachers wait until secondary school to interceed, most of the damage is done. It is not often that parents can be used as one of the resources, they are often one of the problems. "One straightforward direction for school and mental health counselors working with children in trouble should therefore always be [a reduction] in their isolation using as many social, physical, conitive, and emotional vehicles in as many venues as possible" (Hazler and Denham, 2002).
REFERENCES

Brenninkmeijer, J. (2010, February). Taking Care of One's Brain. Retrieved September 2010, from History of the Human Sciences: http://hhs.sagepub.com/content/23/1/107.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc

Capuzzi and Gross. (1996). Youth at Risk. Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association.

Cooper, Heron and Heward. (2007). Applied Behavior Analysis. New York: Prentice Hall.

Fields, B. (2000). School Discipline: Is there a Crisis in Our Schools? Australian Journal of Social Issues, 35(1), 73+.

Hazler and Denham. (2002). Social Isolation of Youth At Risk: Conceptualizations and Practical Implications. Journal of Counseling and Development, 80(4), 403-10.

Lombroso and Scahill. (2008). Tourette Syndrome and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Brain Development, 30(4), 231-7.

McFarland, D. (2001). Student Resistance: How the Formal and Informal Organization of Classrooms Facilitate Everyday Forms of Student Defiance. The American Journal of Sociology, 107(3), 612-680.

Spotts and Atkins. (1998). Super Brain Power. Philadelphia: Life Quest.

Steege, Mac, Perry and Longenecker. (2007). Applied Behavior Analysis: Beyond Discrete Trial Teaching. Psychology and Schools, 44(1), 91-9.

Tourette's Syndrome Fact Sheet. (2010, June 16). Retrieved September 2010, from National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/tourette/detail_tourette.htm