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Judging School Discipline : The Crisis of Moral Authority
Judging School Discipline The Crisis of Moral Authority Author:Richard Arum Reprimand a class comic, restrain a bully, dismiss a student for brazen attire—and you may be facing a lawsuit, costly regardless of the result. This reality for today's teachers and administrators has made the issue of school discipline more complicated than ever before—and public education thus more precarious. This is the troublin... more »g message delivered in Judging School Discipline, a powerfully reasoned account of how decades of mostly well-intended litigation have eroded the moral authority of teachers and principals and degraded the quality of American education. "[Arum's] break with education-school dogma on student rights is powerful and goes far toward explaining why so many teachers dread their students—when they are not actually fighting them off." —Heather MacDonald, Wall Street Journal "Arum's book should be compulsory reading for the legal profession; they need to recognize the long-term effects of their judgments on the climate of schools and the way in which judgments in favor of individual rights can reduce the moral authority of schools in disciplining errant students. But the author is no copybook conservative, and he is as critical of the Right's get-tough, zero-tolerance authoritarianism as he is of what he eloquently describes as the 'marshmallow effect' of liberal reformers, pushing the rules to their limits and tolerating increased misconduct." —John Dunford, Times Higher Education Supplement« less