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Shifting Authority: Teachers’ Role in the Bureaucratization of School Discipline in Postwar Los Angeles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Judith Kafka
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Extract

In November of 1956, the Los Angeles City Board of Education held a regular evening meeting devoted entirely to the topic of school discipline. The session began with brief comments from the district superintendent, Ellis Jarvis, who urged those in attendance not to take the issue too seriously Discipline was “an inherent part of education,” he reminded them, and thus was always “a problem of all schools; all schools in this city, in every city, in every community.” Moreover, he joked, “Denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of their blood.” The rest of the meeting's speakers, however, almost all of whom were Los Angeles teachers, did not share Jarvis’ lighthearted perspective. Representing several local teacher organizations, clubs, and associations, as well as two Board-appointed committees charged with investigating discipline in the city's schools, they portrayed a district in crisis, overrun by misbehaving youth, and urged the Board to take action to address the problem.

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Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , August 2009 , pp. 323 - 346
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Copyright © 2009 History of Education Society 

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References

1 Jarvis, Ellis, quoted in Minutes, Regular Meeting, Elementary, High School, and Junior College, November 8, 1956, binder 543, locker 33, Los Angeles Board of Education Subject Files: Discipline (from here forward referenced as DSF). Google Scholar

2 School boards and courtrooms did at times assert their authority over matters of school discipline, but usually to support the actions of teachers and principals. For a discussion on the legal and historical roots of the doctrine of in loco parentis, see Bybee, Rodger and Gee, E. Gordon, Violence, Values and Justice in the Schools (Boston: Allyn and Bacon Inc., 1982), 23–98. The term “professional bureaucracies” is borrowed from David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 168.Google Scholar

3 I use the term “bureaucracy” in the Weberian sense to refer to an organization in which roles and duties are clearly defined and distinct, a hierarchy of offices exists, individuals are hired based on qualifications and expertize, and work is governed by a stable set of rules. See Scott, W. Richard, Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1998).Google Scholar

4 This argument has been most recently (and thoroughly) made by Arum, Richard et al. in Judging School Discipline: The Crisis of Moral Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Other scholars and educators have made similar arguments in the past. See, for example, Blacker, David, “Proceduralism and the Orthodox Backlash against Students’ Rights,” American Journal of Education 108 (2000): 318–355; Bybee, and Gee, , Violence, Values and Justice; Weinig, Kenneth, “The 10 Worst Educational Disasters of the Twentieth Century: A Traditionalist's List,” Education Week, June 14, 2000, 31. Hampel, Robert, The Last Little Citadel: American High Schools Since 1940 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986), offers a slightly different version of this narrative and credits both the rise of teacher unions in the 1960s and increased recognition of students’ rights with increasing proceduralism in teacher-student relationships.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. 393 U.S. 503 (1969), cited in Bybee, and Gee, , Violence, Values and Justice in the Schools, 65.Google Scholar

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8 Tyack, , One Best System, 274. On postwar enrollment rates, overcrowding, and teacher shortages, see also: Benjamin Fine, Our Children Are Cheated: The Crisis in American Education (New York: Henry Holt, 1947); Murphy, , Blackboard Unions, 180–81; Rury, John, “The Comprehensive High School, Enrollment Expansion, and Inequality: The United States in the Post-War Era.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the History of Education Society, Ottawa, Canada, 2006.Google Scholar

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13 For more thorough discussions of how these various factors were seen to contribute to juvenile delinquency, see Gilbert, , A Cycle of Outrage. For explanations offered at the time, see Richard Clendenen, “Why Teenagers Go Wrong,” U.S. News & World Report, September 17, 1954, 80–84, 86, 88; Cohen, Albert, Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1955); Fine, Benjamin, 1,000,000 Delinquents (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1955).Google Scholar

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18 Quoted in “Congress Studies Juvenile Delinquency,” NEA Journal, May 1955, 304.Google Scholar

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21 Lambert, Sam, “What a National Survey of Teachers Reveals about Pupil Behavior,” NEA Journal 339–342 (September 1956): 339–340.Google Scholar

22 Ibid. The term “slum,” while officially referring only to a poverty-stricken neighborhood with substandard housing, usually had racial connotations in the 1950s. See, for example: Beck, Bertram, “Delinquents in the Classroom,” NEA Journal, (November 1956): 485–487; Clendenen in, “Why Teenagers Go Wrong.” On the use of the term “slum” more generally, see Friedman, Lawrence M., Government and Slum Housing (New York: Arno Press, 1978); Goldberg, David, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1993).Google Scholar

23 By the early 1970s, the district was more segregated than most school systems in the South. Sides, Josh, L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 159.Google Scholar

24 Greater Los Angeles more than doubled in size between 1940 and 1960 (from 3,252,720 to 7,751,616). Beveridge, Andrew and Weber, Susan, “Race and Class in the Developing New York and Los Angeles Metropolises, 1940–2000,” in New York and Los Angeles: Politics, Society, and Culture a Comparative View, ed. Halle, David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 49–78.Google Scholar

25 Los Angeles City School District, Los Angeles City School District Annual Report, 1958–1959. Progress and Achievement: A Report Submitted to the Honorable Members of the Board of Education of the Los Angeles City School District by Ellis A. Jarvis, Superintendent of Schools (Los Angeles: Los Angeles City School District, 1959); “Teachers Pinpoint Pupil Problems,” Los Angeles Times, May 17, 1957, 2.Google Scholar

26 Anderson, Susan, “A City Called Heaven: Black Enchantment and Despair in Los Angeles,” in The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century, eds. Scott, Allen and Soja, Edward (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), 336–64; U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population 1960 General Population Characteristics of California (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1962), Table 21; Acuña, Rodolfo, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 229; Nash, Gerald, The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second World War (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985), 93. There were also significant populations of Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese Americans in Los Angeles, the latter group having recently returned and resettled after being held in internment camps during World War II. Donald Hata, Jr. and Hata, Nadine, “Asian Pacific Angelinos: Model Minorities and Indispensable Scapegoats,” in Twentieth Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion, and Social Conflict, eds. Klein, Norman and Schiesl, Martin, (Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 1990), 61–101. The school district chose to reinforce and promote racial segregation, often creating gerrymandered attendance zones and at times keeping black students from attending the school closest to their homes. For a more detailed discussion see Caughey, John and Caughey, LaRee, To Kill a Child's Spirit: The Tragedy of School Segregation in Los Angeles (Itasca, IL: Peacock, 1973). Although the Los Angeles City School District had collected racial and ethnic data on its student body before the war, it did not do so again until forced to in the 1960s. Thus there are no records of the district's racial composition from this period. Its first “racial and ethnic survey,” conducted in 1966, found that the city's schools were 56 percent white, 21 percent black, and 19 percent Mexican American, and that its white students were almost wholly segregated from students of color. Los Angeles City School District, Racial and Ethnic Survey, Fall 1966 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles City Unified School District, 1966). For information on the district's “nationality and racial background” survey of 1938, see Raftery, Judith R., Land of Fair Promise: Politics and Reform in Los Angeles Public Schools, 1885–1941 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 170–71.Google Scholar

27 James Fifield, Jr. to Findlay, Bruce, Assistant Superintendent of Schools of Los Angeles, December 20, 1954, DSF. Although newspaper editorials and letters to the Board of Education might not offer a representative sample of public opinion, they do indicate that many parents, local leaders, and general citizens had concerns about the state of school discipline in Los Angeles during this period, and that they voiced their concerns in public forums and to district officials. For media coverage on school discipline, see “Bias Learned from Adults, Says Manual Arts Head,” California Eagle, December 1, 1955, 2; “Educational Crisis Cited,” Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1957, 1; “New Meaning for an Old Maxim,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 1958, III, 4; “Student Discipline Plan,” Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1956, A4, among others. See also: Mrs. Halferty, Mary to Members of the Los Angeles School Board, May 17, 1956; Mrs. Ruth Rogers to L.A. Board of Education, May 1, 1956, DSF. Google Scholar

28 In the 1954–55 school year, for example, the district made only 61 referrals to the Juvenile Court and Probation Department. This represented < 0.0009 percent of all student referrals, and included students cited for failing to attend school as well as those with serious behavior or “personal” problems. Moreover, even without any space limitations, the district Associate Superintendent estimated in 1957 that only approximately 1.5 percent of the city's 165,000 junior and high school students would be placed at special welfare schools. Los Angeles City School District, Annual Report; “From Truancy to Welfare,” Los Angeles School Journal, December 13, 1955, 16–17; “Get-Tough Discipline Policy Urged for Problem Pupils,” Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1957, 1.Google Scholar

29 Elementary Needs Report of the Los Angeles Elementary Teachers Club. Presented to Los Angeles City Board of Education, Superintendent Jarvis, Dr. Ralph Lanz, May 1957, DSF. The Los Angeles Elementary Teachers Club received responses from close to 56 percent of the 6,887 teachers to whom they sent surveys. There is no record of a similar survey conducted at the secondary school level.Google Scholar

30 Dreda, Alberta, President of the High School Teachers’ Association of Los Angeles City Inc., to Mrs. Ruth Coal, president and Board of Education Members, January 12, 1956 DSF; Findlay, Bruce to Fifield, James, December 23, 1954, DSF. Google Scholar

31 This shift occurred alongside a large increase in the number of men entering the field of teaching, and some scholars have argued that the rise in teacher unionism that occurred in the 1960s was directly related to, and in part caused by, the masculinization of the teaching force. See, for example, Cole, , The Unionization of Teachers, 87–92. Murphy, , Blackboard Unions, challenges this gendered explanation for the rise in teacher activism, arguing that in demanding better pay and more control over their working conditions, teachers were merely returning to the same set of issues they had pursued since the beginning of unionization, 220–22. See also, 175–95.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 193–94; Kransdorf, Martha, A Matter of Loyalty: The Los Angeles School Board vs. Frances Eisenberg (San Francisco: Caddo Gap Press, 1994).Google Scholar

33 There were, of course exceptions. The conservative Los Angeles Times, for example, was strongly opposed to teachers’ proposals; see “Education, Money and Discipline,” Los Angeles Times November 13, 1956, Section III, 4. For Board members’ enthusiastic response to teachers’ requests, see School Board Minutes, November 8, 1956, DSF. Google Scholar

34 “Teachers Ask Code on Misbehavior,” Los Angeles Times November 9, 1956, Sec. III, 1–2. These departments were the Child Welfare and Attendance Branch; the Division of Health, Education, and Health Services; and the Division of Counseling and Guidance.Google Scholar

35 McDermott, Genevieve, quoted in, Los Angeles City Schools Office of Public Information, “Board of Education Hears Proposals to Strengthen School's Discipline.” April 12, 1957, DSF.Google Scholar

36 “A Report on Discipline Presented to the Los Angeles Board of Education by the Los Angeles Elementary Teachers Club,” November 8, 1956, 3. DSF. Google Scholar

37 Beck, , “Delinquents in the Classroom,” 486. For a broader discussion, see Sol Cohen, “The Mental Hygiene Movement, the Development of Personality and the School: The Medicalization of American Education,” History of Education Quarterly, (Summer, 1982): 123–149. See also, Tropea, Joseph, “Bureaucratic Order and Special Children: Urban Schools, 1950s–1960s,” History of Education Quarterly 27, 3 (Fall 1987): 339–361.Google Scholar

38 “Teachers Ask Code on Misbehavior,” 2.Google Scholar

39 Pitkanen, Allan, “Discipline: What's the Problem?” Los Angeles School Journal, November 1957, 19, 30. On the disproportionate representation of minority and poor youth in special settings during this period, see Tropea, , “Bureaucratic Order and Special Children.”Google Scholar

40 “763 Negro Teachers in L.A. School District,” California Eagle, January 24, 1957,3.Google Scholar

41 Since most of the existing schools for problem youth were located in older sections of the district and served black and Mexican-American schools, Los Angeles teachers’ request that the district create new schools in white neighborhoods could have reflected the unwillingness of white parents in those communities to send their children to racially mixed settings. Yet geographical distance was likely a factor as well. Los Angeles City Schools Office of Public Information, “Board of Education Hears Proposals.”Google Scholar

42 The racial inequities in the city's schools were numerous and beyond the scope of this paper. See Caughey, and Caughey, , To Kill a Child's Spirit; The Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, Violence in the City: An End or a Beginning? (Sacramento: State of California, 1965).Google Scholar

43 For example, in the winter of 1956 a group of black mothers protested the use of corporal punishment in their children's school and a prominent local black newspaper complained that the practice was only conducted in poor, minority neighborhoods. See “Board Sanctions Policy; Gompers’ Mothers Protest,” California Eagle, January 19, 1956, 1.Google Scholar

44 “The Nature of Discipline Affecting Los Angeles City Secondary Schools,” November 8, 1956, DSF. Google Scholar

45 “Discipline in the Elementary School: A Report Presented by the Committee on Discipline in the Elementary School, by the Los Angeles City School Districts Division of Elementary Education,” December 1957, DSF. This report was likely presented to the Board of Education at a meeting held January 9, 1958.Google Scholar

46 McClure, Charles L. to the Los Angeles City Board of Education, January 22, 1957, DSF. Google Scholar

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51 The use of corporal punishment in school had become somewhat controversial nationally during this time, and teachers were increasingly concerned that legal action might be taken against them for whipping, paddling, or engaging in “physical retaliation” against a student. In Los Angeles these concerns were validated in the Fall of 1958, when charges were filed against an elementary school principal who had whipped a misbehaving boy with a belt. Although the matter was quickly dropped, and the grandparents who had filed the claim were roundly criticized, the incident seemed to underscore the need to make school-site educators’ right to use the practice explicit. “Teachers Defend Discipline Rights,” New York Times, August 25, 1956, 1; “Complaint Dropped on Boy's School Spanking,” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1958, pt IV, 1, 6.Google Scholar

52 “Education, Money and Discipline.”Google Scholar

53 The district allocated monies for the creation of one new welfare school, special “adjustment” rooms in every school not served by a welfare school, and additional counseling time in all secondary schools in the city in the Spring of 1957. See “Get-Tough Discipline Policy Urged for Problem Pupils,” Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1957, 1.Google Scholar

54 Willett, H. C., School Board Minutes, November 8, 1956, DSF. Google Scholar

55 The Los Angeles City Board of Education received letters of inquiry and requests for copies of its new code from school officials, teachers, civic leaders, and interested citizens from across the country, many of whom wrote that they had read about the new policy in their local newspapers.Google Scholar

56 Lit, Mark, chairman of Affiliated Teacher Organizations of Los Angeles’ Professional Relations Committee to members of the Los Angeles City Board of Education and Superintendent, October 30, 1958, DSF ATOLA was an umbrella organization comprised of most of the city's local educational associations, unions and clubs, which together represented over 85 percent of the district's teachers. See “Teacher Group Urges Taxes to Pay for 8 Items,” Los Angeles Times, July 13, 1956, 10.Google Scholar

57 Holstein, Harold, Chairman, Professional Problems Committee, High School Teachers Association, in a presentation to the Los Angeles City Board of Education, September 22, 1960, DSF Google Scholar

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59 Los Angeles City Schools Office of Public Information, “L.A. City Schools Emphasize Discipline”; Los Angeles City Schools, “The 3 R's of Discipline,” (n.d.), DSF. Paul Burke, April 23, 1959, “Law and Rules Committee Reports Nos. 1 and 2,” April 27, 1959, DSF.Google Scholar

60 “‘Get Tough’ Policy for Schools,” 1.Google Scholar

61 Los Angeles City Schools Office of Public Information, “Schools Outline Ways to Control Pupil Behavior,” October 9, 1959; “Second Revision: Administrative Guide, Division II—Pupils;” Chapter 6: Discipline—Elementary, Junior and Senior High Schools,” adopted by the Los Angeles City Board of Education, April 27, 1959, DSF. Google Scholar

62 “Paul Burke, April 23, 1959, “Law and Rules Committee Reports Nos. 1 and 2,” April 27, 1959, DSF. Google Scholar

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65 McCammond, Marion and Firor, Marion, “Child Guidance Clinics—What and When?” Los Angeles School Journal 15 (February 1959): 24–25.Google Scholar

66 Holstein to the Los Angeles City Board of Education, September 22, 1960, DSF. They also asked for smaller classes and increased parent education. Some teacher groups and committees had made similar requests in earlier reports as well.Google Scholar

67 For examples, see, Manning, John, “Discipline in the Good Old Days,” reprinted in Corporal Punishment in American Education: Readings in History, Practice, and Alternatives, eds, Hyman, Irwin and Wise, James (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), 50–61; “Schools for Problem Students,” New York Times August 18, 1957, E9; “Youth Crime Laid to Cultural Lag,” New York Times October 5, 1959. By 1975, centralized discipline policies were in place in over 75 percent of U.S. school districts. See Doob, Heather, Codes of Student Discipline and Student Rights (Arlington, VA: Educational Research Service, 1975).Google Scholar

68 Along with court decisions protecting students’ first amendment rights and requiring due process in disciplinary actions, many advocacy groups promoted centralized discipline policies as a way to ensure educational equity and justice in the 1960s and 1970s. See American Civil Liberties Union, Academic Freedom in Secondary Schools (New York: ACLU, 1968); Children's Defense Fund of the Washington Research Project, School Suspensions: Are They Helping Children? (Washington, DC: Children's Defense Fund, 1975). The most prominent of these cases were Tinker v. Des Moines and Goss v. Lopez 419 U.S. 565 (1975). On the institutional relationship between juveniles’ procedural rights in school, procedural rights in courts, and the expansion of special education, see Richardson, John, Common, Delinquent, and Special: The Institutional Shape of Special Education (New York: Falmer Press, 1999), 152–68; Nelson, Adam, The Elusive Ideal: Equal Educational Opportunity and the Federal Role in Boston's Public Schools, 1950–1985 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).Google Scholar