Teachers' Library: Schooling for Change (PDF)

don’t appear to fit. Supporting and caring well for students who are at risk means having schools organized and structured to support and care well for all students. One of the most compelling reasons for school restructuring is to create schools that are more welcoming, inclusive and caring communities for all their students—mainstream and atrisk alike—and not just ones that cruise along in the slipstream of their high academic achievers (Stoll and Fink, 1996).

In chapter 2 we explained why the personal and social needs of young adolescents are so important. We pointed to the twin horns of the adolescent dilemma— the need for independence and the need for care—and showed how most secondary schools and junior high schools appear to neglect and sometimes even undermine the realization of these needs. Grades 7 and 8 of junior high school, we noted, are where discipline, control and regimentation appear to be greater than at any other point in the system. Many secondary schools, meanwhile, are like overcrowded airports, with the school bell signaling changes of flight every fifty to seventy minutes as students scramble to their lockers to exchange equipment for the next class (Hargreaves, 1982).

High school students, especially those who are not college-bound, tend to see their teachers as having no interest in them (Wehlage and Rutter, 1986). Students who have dropped out are perceived less favorably by their former teachers than by parents, peers or employers (Karp, 1988; Gedge, 1991). When these students are asked if there is one thing that would have kept them in school, they most often point to more caring teachers, to there being one adult who knows them well and cares for them (Karp, 1988). Potential dropouts or not, most students regardless of heritage, gender, or social class want teachers to care about them (Ryan, 1994).

Decades ago, Emile Durkheim (1956) argued that with the decline of the church’s responsibility for the care and socialization of children, state education must now hold the prime responsibility for moral education of the young.