Schools need to enforce boundaries and procedures. In the fall of 2006, during lunch, we had a fight between about twenty students and they were grouped up racially: African-Americans and Latino students. This incident was a culmination of appeasement policies by the principal. We had no school police officer, but following the incident, we had a police officer for a few weeks. One thing I remember him saying is that the first thing the principal should do is have assigned lunch tables.
The principal refused to implement this policy because it would not be well received. Children, especially adolescents, will usually complain and even become borderline verbally abusive, but that is because they continually test the boundaries and constantly want to fight for their so called “rights.” They confuse rights with privileges and we don’t do them any favors if we provide weak policies characterized by appeasement.
