In With the In Crowd: organizations, mob psychology, and alternative education

Today I was reading some Education News. This article caught my eye. Apparently, the New York City school system has a rubbish bin for its problem students:

“Out of '‘Site' Education”
Thursday, March 2, 2006
by Bernard Gassaway

Over the last two years, while serving as Senior Superintendent of Alternative Schools and Programs, I have visited New York City public school programs in church basements, housing projects, homeless shelters, storefronts, suspension centers, juvenile detention centers, and prisons. I ventured into places that few department of education officials would dare go. Most pretend these makeshift programs do not exist. Worse, they pretend that these children do not exist --– out of sight, out of mind.

The school system's response to children who do not fit is to place them out of 'site.' The familiar cry, "“Lock '‘em up and throw away the key,"” is more of a reality than you might realize. The New York City Department of Education's (DOE) way of dealing with children who are described as disruptive is to treat them like criminals. As states across this country have moved toward privatization of prisons, this current administration has opted to follow suit and outsource education. DOE establishes partnerships with community-based organizations (CBO) to service children who have historically been failed by the system. These children fall into the following categories: suspended, homeless, pregnant, over-aged and under-credited.

By outsourcing services for our most challenging students, DOE concedes it is not willing to meet the needs of these children. In fact, the organizations being bankrolled and contracted by DOE to serve these students cannot meet their needs. These organizations will never admit it; to do so would be to bite the hand that feeds them. However, they have told DOE officials they will not service special education students. These students are considered too far gone and beyond help.

Read the rest of this, as it is quite informative and, I think, important.

Are the same trends toward privatization happening in the more commonly recognized forms of carceral systems (i.e., prisons, asylums, etc.) occurring in U.S. schools? I think that they are. More and more, parents, who are led astray from their children by hucksters posing as educational experts, attempt to regain "“control"” of their children through oft draconian methods. Some send their children to special places to get them straightened out. Sometimes, as the article referenced above suggests, we do so through special programs for "“troubled"” and "“at-risk"” youth, that enable parents, private organizations, and the State to articulate increasingly tight systems of surveillance, control, and punishment. I am aghast at where this might take our schools and where it might take us collectively as a society.

This disturbing trend, as marked the emergence of increasingly hellish prisons, government detention facilities , and behavioral modification programs, particularly B-Mod programs for youth, seem like an Orwellian nightmare in the early stages. In about thirty short years, we have gone from a society oriented toward humanitarianism to one oriented even more strongly toward dehumanization. I would assume that most folks would be disturbed by this, but it doesn'’t seem to be the case. I have a theory as to why this is happening. Let'’s call it the parable of the Mob and the Innocent Bystander. In this story, I want to illustrate how organizational psychology and mob psychology have something in common. I also want to talk about how most people, aside from those brave enough to dissent, stand by and let things like this happen, or, in some cases, join forces with the Mob.

Reading books like Bill BufordÂ’s Among the Thugs, a inside view of hooliganism in European football (i.e., soccer) has influenced my understanding of crowd behavior. I have come to the conclusion that when you get a bunch of people together they no longer act as individuals, but as something else. Sometimes being in a group allows people to act out in ways they wouldn'’t even think of in closer company. Crowds act differently than individuals. This helps to explain riots, revivals, concerts, and other mass happenings. They feel different. They allow individuals to become part of something far larger and different. Under such conditions, people will do some fucked up things. When everyone is involved, one'’s own actions seem like a part of a larger whole. There is an element of anonymity, of intensity of perception, of intensity of purpose, that is simply not possible otherwise. Millions of screaming sports fans and attendees at music festivals and religious happenings could no doubt testify to how that feels and what happens as a result.

This helps me to understand, also, why individuals'’ behavior inside of organizations (e.g., clubs, gangs, churches, corporations, and so forth) departs from their private behavior. For example, Lyndie England, the famous face and scapegoat of the Abu Graib prison scandal, probably behaved much differently under the circumstances of her fame than in more normal circumstances. When we create organizational structures that more or less process human beings, producing more ideal human "“products,"” there is a greater and greater danger that the individuals in the organization, driven by that larger organizational purpose, will be able to treat any human "“dysfunction"” in that organizational system (e.g., poorly behaved children) as less than fully human. This ignores that human beings cannot, logically, be dysfunctions in an organizational system, unless one's thinking about organizational functioning assumes that people are less than human. To assume this is to make a categorical error. Human beings are not the same thing as organizational "parts." Children, prisoners, the insane, the mentally challenged, the crippled of mind, limb and spirit, become human sacrifices on the altar of organizational mission.

We must be careful to remember that education is always, always, always about human relationships. When we allow organizational mission to occlude that, and to create the conditions that breed dehumanizing behavior, and sociopathic personalities for that matter, then we do not serve humanity. We don'’t help anyone by forcing every individual into conceptual cubby holes. But it happens every day. We break a lot of these individuals as they are made, with increasing forcefulness, to comply with organizational rules, roles, and outcomes. More importantly, people who fail to fit well, who get broken in the process, are personally to blame for their victimage. Those who are made to fit, easily or not, and survive the process, often have, themselves, internalized the logic of their oppression. Even if we think, for example, that a teacher is unfair, and school sucks, it is difficult not to pay attention to what one'’s poor grades are supposed to mean. Very few people who make passing grades have sympathy for those who don'’t. They feel lucky, skilled, and maybe a little bit righteous about it. They succeeded where others failed. Failure, of course, is a matter of not having the right attitude or not applying oneself or--—Fates forfend!--— resisting the attempt to mold one'’s cognitions and behaviors. This trend toward sameness and blame for failure to conform may be the greatest danger facing our public schools. It stifles creativity, arbitrarily rewards conforming behaviors, and lays the groundwork for scapegoating those who pose a problem for the smooth functioning of the system.

Do y'’all get what I'’m talking about here? If so, feel free to post me some examples in the comments.

Sela. Pause, reflect, and get pissed.