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A tacit hands-off policy pays impressive dividends. In the case of my school, those dividends were
reflected in the neighborhood newspaper’s customary reference to the place as "The West Side’s
Best-Kept Secret." This was supposed to mean that private school conditions obtained inside the
building, civility was honored, the battlefield aspect of other schools with large minority
populations was missing. And it was true. The tone of the place was as good as could be found in
Community School District 3. It was as if by withdrawing every expectation from the rowdy, their
affability rose in inverse proportion.
Not long after my transfer into this school I came into home room one morning to discover Jack,
a handsome young fellow of thirteen, running a crap game in the back of the room, a funny
looking cigarette in his mouth. "Hey, Jack, knock it off," I snapped, and like the surprisingly
courteous boy he was, he did. But a little while later there was Jack undressing a girl fairly
conspicuously in the same corner, and this time when I intervened harshly he was slow to comply.
A second order got no better results. "If I have to waste time on this junk again, Jack, you can
cool your heels in the principal’s office," I said
Jack looked disappointed in me. He spoke frankly as if we were both men of the same world,
"Look, Gatto," he told me in a low, pleasant voice so as not to embarrass me, "it won’t do any
good. Save yourself the trouble. That lady will wink at me, hold me there for eight minutes—I’ve
timed her before—and dump me back here. Why make trouble for yourself?" He was right. Eight
minutes.
How could such a policy produce hallway decorum and relative quiet in classrooms, you may ask?
Well, look at it this way: it’s tailor-made to be nonconfrontational with dangerous kids. True, it
spreads terror and bewilderment among their victims, but, happy or unhappy, the weak are no
problem for school managers; long experience with natural selection at my school had caused
unfortunates to adapt, in Darwinian fashion, to their role as prey. Like edible animals they
continued to the water hole in spite of every indignity awaiting. That hands-off modus vivendi
extended to every operation. Only once in four years did I hear any teacher make an indirect
reference to what was happening. One day I heard a lady remark offhandedly to a friend, "It’s like
we signed the last Indian treaty here: you leave us alone; we leave you alone."
It’s not hard to see that, besides its beneficial immediate effect, this pragmatic policy has a
powerful training function, too. Through it an army of young witnesses to officially sanctioned
bad conduct learn how little value good conduct has. They learn pragmatism. Part of its silent
testimony is that the strong will always successfully suppress the weak, so the weak learn to
endure. They learn that appeals to authority are full of risk, so they don’t make them often. They
learn what they need in order to be foot soldiers in a mass army.
Psychopathic. An overheated word to characterize successful, pragmatic solutions to the control
of institutional chaos. Isn’t this process a cheap and effective way to keep student entropy in
check at the cost of no more than a little grief on the part of some dumb animals? Is it really
psychopathic or only strategic sophistication? My principal, let’s call her Lulu to protect the
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