¶ … American Educator
How does one deal with a select group of youths who are identified as antisocial, whether in elementary, middle, or high schools? Is intervention and collective counseling appropriate, or individual counseling for such students? Is merely universal strict school discipline enough, with selective intervention only a last resort? Should the antisocial individual ever be removed from the school population as a whole? Unfortunately, current studies provide a mixed set of research data and outcomes of programs to answer these thorny questions, with the only consensus emerging that the earlier the identification and targeting of such students, the better, for both the other student, society, the individual in question, and society as a whole.
Literature Review
"Is Negative Behavior Causing Students to be Unproductive in the Classroom?" The answer, provided by the article by Hill M. Walker, Elizabeth Ramsey, and Frank M. Greesham, published in Winter 2003-2004 edition of American Educator, provides a resounding 'yes.' The article defines a three-tiered strategy to cope a specific and dangerous type of student who is, according to the authors, disrupting the classrooms of America's teachers, and thwarting the educations of their fellow students. Not only are these students coming to the classrooms of American academically unprepared to cope with the reasonable demands placed upon them by teachers, rather the antisocial type of...
In fact, with this core group of antisocial students, usual classroom management of collective unruly behavior was often ineffective. Genetic and environmental issues may conspire to cause the behavior, or in some cases a learning disability, but regardless the student's use of hitting, whining, punching, or generally disruptive tactics gave them a limited repertoire of coping skills that the student's parents either unintentionally reinforced or could not cope with at home. This makes the normally difficult transition time into school, requiring the student to cope with others, deal with conflicts and competition with others, and negotiate disagreements particularly fraught. (Walker, Ramsey, Greesham, 2003)
Estimates of children with this pattern of behavior run as high as sixteen percent, according to Walker, Ramsey and Greesham, and they catalogue a 'spiraling' effect whereby minor infractions in the lower grades, when ignored, lead to more dangerous and even criminal forms of 'acting out' in later adolescence. This is why early intervention is so key, especially as while truancy is…
