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Education reform is impossible without order in the classroom. Without the attitudes that lead to order, the classroom is an entirely impotent technique (the attitudes that are fundamental to it. Among these, from the students point of view, are tolerance for delayed gratification, a certain measure of respect for and fear of authority, and a willingness to accommodate ones individual desires to the interests of group cohesion and purpose.)These attitudes cannot be taught easily in school because they are a necessary component of the teaching situation itself. Little can be taught in school unless these attitudes are present. Such attitudes must be learned during the years before a child starts school; that is, in the home. This is the real meaning of the phrase "preschool education." If a child is not made ready at home for the classroom experience, he or she usually cannot benefit from any normal school program. Just as important, the school is defenseless against such a child, who, typically, is a source of disorder in a situation that requires order the classroomeven the traditional classroom-is not to be abandoned because some children have not learned to use it. (analogy with the invention of the wheels with the Aztecs and their inability to use it properly) The electronic media, with their emphasis on visual imagery, immediacy, non-linearity, and fragmentation, do not give support to the attitudes that are fundamental to the classroom; students who are products of the twentieth century The classroom is a nineteenth-century invention, and we ought to prize what it has to offer. It is one of the few social organizations left to us in which sequence, social order, hierarchy, continuity, and deferred pleasure are important. The problem of disorder in the classroom is created largely by two factors: a dissolving family structure, out of which come youngsters who are "unfit" for the presuppositions of a classroom; and a radically altered information environment, which undermines the foundations of school. Sollutions for the disorder in question: 1. poverty is the main cause of family dissolution, and that by improving the economic situation of families, we may kindle a sense of order and aspiration in the lives of children. Some of the reforms he suggests seem practical, although they are longrange and offer no immediate response to the problem of present disorder (proposed by Liberal reformer Kenneth Keniston) 2. dissolving the schools altogether, or so completely restructuring the school environment (by Ivan lllich, a Utopian) 3. One of the best answers comes from Dr. Howard Hurwitz, who is neither a liberal reformer nor a Utopian. It is a good solution, I believe, because it tries to respond to the needs not only of children who are unprepared for school because of parental failure but of children of all backgrounds who are being made strangers to the assumptions of school by the biases of the electronic media. One of his most important ideas (according to the writer): Educators must devote at least as much attention to the immediate consequences of disorder as to its abstract causes. Whatever the causes of disorder and alienation, the consequences are severe and, if not curbed, result in making the school impotent. He holds to the belief, for example, that a childs right to an education is terminated at the point where the child interferes with the right of other children to have one.

disorder expands proportionately to the tolerance for it, and that children of all kinds of home backgrounds can learn, in varying degrees, to function in situations where disorder is not tolerated at all.All this adds up to the common sense view that the school ought not to accommodate itself to disorder Dr. Hurwitz believes that as a technique for learning, the classroom can work if students are oriented toward its assumptions, not the other way around even with the failure of parents to assume competent responsibility for the preschool education of their children and The increase of the intensity of the medias fragmenting influence The school is not an extension of the street, the movie theater, a rock concert, or a playground. And it is certainly not an extension of the psychiatric clinic. It is a special environment that requires the enforcement of certain traditional rules of controlled group interaction. It would be a grave mistake to change those rules because some children find them hard or cannot function within them. Children who cannot ought to be removed from the environment in the interests of those who can. Wholesale suspensions, however, are a symptom of disorder, not a cure for it. (according to the author)

dress code.
A dress code signifies that school is a special place in which special kinds of behavior are required.
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The way one dresses is an indication of an attitude toward a situation. And the way one is expected to dress indicates what that attitude ought to be. The school has every right and
reason, I believe, to expect the same sort of consideration: If we want school to feel like a special place, we can find no better way to begin than by requiring students to dress in a manner befitting the seriousness of the enterprise and the institution (this is the case for both sudents and teachers): a standard of dress which would mark school as a place of dignity and seriousness

The proposed arguments against such approach and refuted by the author: this is a superficial point (a view advanced by some). The authors answer to this: symbols not only reflect our feelings but to some extent create them. Ones kneeling in church, for example, reflects a sense of reverence but also engenders reverence. If we want school to feel like a special place, we can find no better way to begin than by requiring students to dress in a manner befitting the seriousness of the enterprise and the institution. poor people would be unable to clothe their children properly if such a code were in force. Tha authors answer to it: It is an argument that middle-class education critics have made

on behalf of the poor (Another argument advanced in behalf of the poor and oppressed is the students right to their own language. this argument was never advanced from parents whose children are not competent to use Standard English. It is an argument was put forward by "liberal" education critics whose children are competent in Standard English but who wish to express their solidarity with and charity for those who are less capable. ): Like the mode of dress, the mode of language in school ought to be relatively formal and exemplary, and therefore markedly

different from the custom in less rigorous places. It is particularly important that teachers should avoid trying to win their students affection by adopting the language of youth. the modern conception of childhood is a product of the sixteenth century, as Philippe Aries has documented in his The Centuries of Childhood. Prior to that century, children as young as six and seven were treated in all important respects as if they were adults. Their language, their dress, their legal status, their responsibilities, their labor, were much the same as those of adults. The concept of childhood as an identifiable stage in human growth began to develop in the sixteenth century and has continued into our own times. However, with the emergence of electronic media of communication, a reversal of this trend seems to be taking place. In a culture in which the distribution of information is almost wholly undifferentiated, age categories begin to disappear. Television, in itself, may bring an end to childhood. the school is one of our few remaining institutions based on firm distinctions between childhood and adulthood, and on the assumption that adults have something of value to teach the young. That is why teachers must avoid emulating in dress and speech the style of the young. It is also why the school ought to be a place for what we might call "manners education": the adults in school ought to be concerned with teaching youth a standard of civilized interaction. The power of media such as television and radio is hugely underestimated by the masses that often teach them how one is to conduct oneself in public. In a general sense, the media "unprepare" the young for behavior in groups. A young man who goes through the day with a radio affixed to his ear is learning to be indifferent to any shared sound. A young woman who can turn off a television program that does not suit her needs at the moment is learning impatience with any stimulus that is not responsive to her interests. But school is not a radio station or a television program. It is a social situation requiring the subordination of ones own impulses and interests to those of the group. In a word, manners. As a rule, elementary school teachers will exert considerable effort in teaching manners. But it is astonishing how precipitously this effort is diminished at higher levels. It is certainly neglected in the high schools, and where it is not, there is usually an excessive concern for "bad habits," such as smoking, drinking, and, in some nineteenth-century schools, swearing. But, as William .James noted, our virtues are as habitual as our vices. Difficulties teachers face in classrooms: Students suffer media-shortened attention spans and have become accustomed, also through intense media exposure, to novelty, variety, and entertainment. Some

teachers have made desperate attempts to keep their students "tuned in" by fashioning their classes along the lines of Sesame Street or the Tonight show. They tell jokes. They change the pace. They show films, play records, and avoid anything that would take more than eight minutes. Although their motivation is understandable, this is what their students least need. However difficult it may be, the teacher must try to achieve student attention and even enthusiasm through the attraction of ideas, not razzmatazz. Those who think I am speaking here in favor of "dull" classes may themselves, through media exposure, have lost an understanding of the potential for excitement contained in an idea. The media should not obliterate in the young, particularly in the adolescent, what William James referred to as a "theoretic instinct": a need to know reasons, causes, abstract conceptions. Such an "instinct" can be seen in its earliest stages in what he calls the "sporadic metaphysical inquiries of children as to who made God, and why they have five fingers. . . ." But it takes a more compelling and sustained form in adolescence, and may certainly be developed by teachers if they are willing to stand fast and resist the seductions of our media environment.