In an essay published in 1994 and titled “Let’s Really Reform Our Schools,” Anita Garland made the radical suggestion that we must not only stop forcing everyone to attend school but that we must stop allowing those who are not interested in studying to attend. We should, she says, toss the troublemakers out.

Garland’s idea seems contrary to the principles of education in a democratic society, where everyone supposedly has the right to a public education. Under this premise, not only must we not leave any child behind; we must not leave any child out. Even if Johnny is a constant troublemaker who shows absolutely no intention of attempting to learn anything and rejects – or, at best, is indifferent to – the gift of learning that the school wishes to bestow upon him, we are obligated to keep offering that gift, at least until he reaches the age when he can drop out.

I can’t help it if I seem undemocratic – Garland’s idea makes sense to me. In just about any other social setting, we take disruptive people who refuse to play by the rules or generally misbehave and toss them out. They have the right to be there only as long as they abide by certain agreed-upon conventions of behavior. When they do not, they forfeit that right.

Those who oppose Garland’s idea say: “But what will become of poor Johnny if we kick him out of school? He will go through life uneducated, untutored, doomed to failure. He will roam the streets and get into trouble, perhaps becoming a criminal.” But isn’t the outcome likely to be much the same if, as Garland puts it, he is “passed from grade to grade, learning nothing, making teachers and fellow students miserable”? We merely delay the inevitable outcome, meanwhile allowing Johnny and kids like him to undermine the schools by disrupting every class they attend and probably driving standards lower for everyone.

Enabling Johnny, year after year, to defy the system that seeks to save him from almost certain failure in life does him no good and can do the rest of the students, and the school system, terrible harm. A school is not a rehabilitation center or a halfway house for wayward youth. It is a place where learning should – and must – take place.

At another level, we have the kids who are lazy but are not necessarily disruptive, the ones I shall call slugs. Do we treat them the same way that we treat the troublemakers? Here we face the situation that I discussed in "Challenge: An Educational Dilemma.” A student may plod along in school, displaying little apparent interest in learning, either because the student has a genuine problem keeping up with other students or because he or she is flat-out lazy. I fully approve of reaching out to those students who, for reasons beyond their control, cannot maintain the pace of learning that most of their peers can. I even approve of making a special effort to reach those students whose social and family backgrounds put them at a disadvantage. However, educators should be able to distinguish between those who have problems with learning and those who are too lazy to learn and don’t want to do so.

Part of education must be to demonstrate to students that sloth carries a severe penalty. If one doesn’t do the job, one gets fired, or, at the very least, one does not get promoted. A student’s job is to at least try to do the job of learning. True, selling kids, particularly teenagers, the idea that it is necessary to work at learning is extremely difficult, especially when many forms of play are available to them. But it must be done. And those who repeatedly show that they have no intention of at least trying to learn must be let go. Perhaps, after a few years of low-paying drudge work, they will return to night school. Perhaps not. It is not the schools’ job to rouse intractable sloths from their self-indulgent torpor.

At this point, someone is bound to say that the schools must motivate students to learn. That is true, but, unless some self-motivation exists as well, slugs will remain slugs. While it may be unrealistic to expect teens to be infused with the joy of learning, one would think that the obvious rewards (if only the tangible ones) of being an educated man or woman in modern society would be enough motivation for them.

Along these lines, when discussing Garland’s essay, some of my college students insist that what the schools need to do is make school more fun. It should be, they say, more entertaining and enjoyable. This, I insist, is poppycock. Unfortunately, it is an idea that some educators are buying and that may well account for why students learn as little as they do. The classroom is not a TV show whose function is to amuse and entertain. It is a place to learn and to work. If the learning and working can be made enjoyable and entertaining as well, so much the better, but having fun is not the primary purpose of the classroom.

Mature, working adults separate the working day from the hours devoted to more enjoyable pursuits. Many, of course, derive pleasure in their work, and a fortunate few may even enjoy their jobs as much as they do their free time. But everyone acknowledges the necessity of buckling down to the job while in the shop or office. Schools already allow ample opportunities for fun in the form of extracurricular activities, sports, and social events. In the classroom, however, students need to focus on the serious work at hand – and save the fun for after hours. Learning to do so, and accepting the necessity of doing so, is itself part of the learning process. It prepares them for the responsibilities of adult life, where one must undertake many tasks that are not fun.

Young people who are unwilling to accept this responsibility in school should be let go, just as surely as troublemakers should be expelled. They should be sent out to discover the hard way that school, burdensome as it may be, is in fact the easy way. But let’s not make it too easy because, for most of us, few worthwhile things are easy.