NCJ Number
75564
Date Published
1978
Length
16 pages
Annotation
The school is portrayed from the perspective of the West German author as an agency of social control. The article emphasizes the cooperation between youth welfare agents and school authorities.
Abstract
The school assumes an essential function in the process of formal criminalization of certain juveniles and thus contributes to the maintenance and enforcement of established social structures and power relationships. Forms of control are the organized socialization processes to produce socially approved attitudes and behavior, the process of student selection and grade distribution affecting individuals' future social status, stigmatization processes in the school, and cooperative efforts with other social agencies. The system, with teachers as the dominant representatives, is likely to expect deviant behavior from students with low social status, thus encouraging that role. Without hesitation, teachers often pass on their observations of pupils' behavior to the police or the Youth Welfare Office. Pupils are thus segregated into a system of formal control which is more likely to aggravate than to reduce youths' behavioral problems. Written school reports are submitted by teachers to the Youth Welfare Office in the most serious cases. Lower class students are overrepresented in such reports, and the reports have a crucial bearing on whether a child will be sent to a reformatory and on the child's juvenile court sentence. Evaluation of actual school reports shows that they contain selective information, that they ignore the social and interactional context of children's behavior, and that they fail to provide a specific definition of deviant behavior. Not only may teachers write reports at their own discretion according to their own likes and dislikes, but they also have access through the report request to the vital information that the student is 'in trouble.' Teachers have the power to spread that information in the school and will tend to feel that the information supports their preconceived notions. Written reports are a vital factor in the suspension of attempts to solve students' behavioral problems within the schools. Tables, notes and three references are supplied.