Island of Misfit Students

What's an effective solution to bullying in schools?

Some think the best way to deal with the problem is to remove misfit students and place them in a school of their own.

So, the Alliance School was born.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The Alliance proposal was a unique and risky venture that would challenge the conventions of what a school environment could - or should - be. Although plans for Alliance generated little vocal controversy, it did raise some eyebrows.

Tina Owen, a teacher at Milwaukee's Washington High School until this school year, came up with the idea for Alliance after watching students like Yoder [a Goth] get tormented by their classmates and even, sometimes, by their teachers.

Kids were tormented by their teachers? Does anyone else find that to be completely unprofessional?

A system that permits abusive teachers to remain in the classroom has serious problems. Those teachers should be fired immediately.

There were the gay students who might get called fags, Goth students referred to as devils, and a slew of other students who, for whatever reason, did not feel comfortable speaking up or being themselves.

The idea was to create a more supportive environment so these kids wouldn't drift away from school and drop out. The proposal easily won approval from the Milwaukee School Board and administrators, who were eager to support small schools designed to build closer relationships with students.

If the idea was to "create a more supportive environment," why not just punish the bullies to address the problem?

MPS is admitting defeat. Apparently, the bullies are in charge.

But some observers, like Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University's law school, worried about the broader message such a school would send.

"High schools are often the last opportunity to instill basic citizenship values, including tolerance for a pluralistic society, and removing victims from that environment is, in many ways, a concession," Turley said in an interview last year. "If these administrators cannot guarantee a healthy and safe environment, the solution is to get new administrators, not create a new school."

I agree.

Owen and her colleagues hoped to create a pluralistic community within their school - and use that as a model to start changing the larger society.

There are already pluralistic communities at schools. That's the problem. It's the pluralism that some out of control, bratty kids feed off of as an excuse to be cruel.

How does gathering all the misfits into one place build a model to change society at large?

The Alliance School is not a reflection of the real world. What goes on in that artificial environment is not applicable to society in general. It's like a laboratory experiment. The dynamics are not what the kids will have to confront outside of school.

They knew the school would hold a natural appeal for gay students. But they wanted to make sure Alliance would be diverse in race, sexuality, class, background and lifestyle. The teachers spent the spring and summer recruiting through not only Project Q, the youth program of the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center, but also at teen hangouts and through word of mouth.

I'd like to know how the teachers selected recruits. It seems like that process in itself must have been rather stigmatizing.

...While many students quickly espouse the ideals of Alliance, the school still battles challenges found at all urban high schools: Getting students in the door, and keeping them engaged.

On the surface, the kids may look different. But below there's still that disconnect from school that some teenagers experience.

Owen said about 70% of the students attend consistently, and the other 30% only sporadically. The school tries different strategies to get the chronic skippers in the door more frequently, including limiting their bus passes to daytime hours.

Teacher Brian O'Neill said the first several months of the school year were spent building a school culture, and teaching the kids about the expectations at Alliance. No one had anticipated the extent of the social service and counseling needs the kids would bring, he added.

Plus, the teachers were overwhelmed in the beginning with the logistics of starting a school. For a while, Alliance did not even have a fax machine. Now that most kids have bought into the concept and culture, O'Neill said, the teachers need to focus on connecting them to their classwork.

Obviously, the special school didn't alleviate truancy issues.

Another area of concern:

High schoolers should not have needed SEVERAL MONTHS to catch on to expectations and to establish a school culture before they could focus on classwork. That seems excessive.

Furthermore, it doesn't take a genius to predict that the misfit kids would be in need of extensive counseling services. How is it possible that "no one had anticipated the extent" of those needs?

I don't think providing a school for misfits is a solution. A leper island isolates them, but it doesn't cure the problem. In fact, it serves to stigmatize them even more, to reinforce the fact that they don't fit in.

Actually, I think the focus should be on the abusers.

If anyone should be labeled as not fitting in, it's them. Put them in a school for bullies. Single out the abusers and label them as the social outcasts. Typically, bullying goes unchecked because staff members don't want to confront the fact that they lack control of the student population. It's too much of a hassle and easier to ignore; or as in this case, the simplest solution is to ship the victims out to a separate school.

In effect, the Alliance School labels kids, and provides a safe haven established for losers. The claim is that this offers these students a supportive environment. At what cost to their self-esteem? It seems like a high price to pay.

Moreover, I believe that once the outcasts are removed, the remaining bullies will find NEW targets. Bullies need to bully. It's a mistake to think that bullying behavior will go away simply by isolating the kids currently being abused.

It's possible that the Alliance School will only serve to create even more kids suffering from harassment.

The bottom line is ALL kids need to be taught to treat each other with respect and tolerate each other's differences.

The creation of an island refuge for victimized students does nothing to achieve that end.