Two problems:

1) school education is mandatory until 16-18 in most countries, so what do you do with them once they get expelled. They have to be in education somewhere - so do you just put them in one school for all the expelled students, which is just constantly on fire? You made the problem much worse for yourself(as in - the state).

2) " there’s no benefit to keeping them in school and massive consequences for the good kids" - the massive consequences for kicking them out and not dealing with the problem are then on us, the society, because you get dysfunctional kids that got no help and just got kicked out instead. What kind of adults do you think they will grow into? Or is the answer "I don't care"?

Keeping them in school like it is done now, does not help them in any way, it merely transforms school from a place to learn into a mini prison where dysfunctional kids do not allow other kids to learn too.

15 year old who decides that he doesn't want to learn would be much better off if he gets expelled, goes to work at macdonalds, and comes back later, than the current situation where he gets to go to school and do nothing.

Also the mere possibility of being expelled and having to go to work will help many more children to keep studying.

>>Keeping them in school like it is done now, does not help them in any way

Well of course not, because schools don't have the support they need to help those students in turn.

>>goes to work at macdonalds

I don't know where you live where employing 15 year olds is legal, but even if we assume some kind of state where it's allowed, what mcdolands would employ a 15 year old that was expelled from school?

>>and comes back later,

How would that even work? You mean they enroll back at a private school to get their education? With what money?

The path isn't "well they get expelled so they just go to work" - most likely the path is that they just stay at home doing nothing all day if their parents let them, or they just turn to vagrancy/crime. No 15 year old is going to go "well I got kicked out of school so I better look for the most basic job" - it's some kind of unrealistic pipe dream of how society works.

But either way - you haven't really answered my question. In most places a child has to be in education until they turn 18. So when you kicked them out of school at 15, what is the state supposed to do with them?

>I don't know where you live where employing 15 year olds is legal, but even if we assume some kind of state where it's allowed, what mcdolands would employ a 15 year old that was expelled from school?

I live stateside, and I've seen adverts saying they hire 14 year olds

> You mean they enroll back at a private school to get their education?

I mean the money that government wastes keeping them in school while they are 15 and don't want to learn, can be given to them later when/if they decide to learn.

> most likely the path is that they just stay at home doing nothing all day if their parents let them.

That's up to the parent to decide: leave them at home, convince them to find a job, go to special school or a class for misbehaving children, go to trade school etc.

Those who turn to vagrancy/crime do it anyway, as they have enough time outside of school too.

> child has to be in education until they turn 18.

> employing 15 year olds is [not] legal

These are not physical laws given to us from above, these are rather misguided attempts by politicians to look good, and are harmful to the society.

Imagine that instead of prisons we were forcing criminals to go spend time sitting in offices and disrupting normal work. What we do with children now is equally effective.

  > So when you kicked them out of school at 15, what is the state supposed to do with them?
That becomes the parents' problem. Let them find a school willing to take their abusive kid - or have the state come after them for having children not in school.

The threat of such should help encourage parents to actually raise decent children.

Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in mental institutions.

To be clear, abuse in these programs should be prevented as much as feasible, and there should be an opportunity for any kid who demonstrates redemption to get back in school.

It’s a bad solution, but I don’t know any which is better. Keeping them in society is worse for innocent people (and doesn’t seem to usually benefit them either, misbehaving kids usually seem miserable).

And yes, the state pays to take care of them. Otherwise it’s paying for the damage they cause outside.

>>Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in mental institution

....what kind of work programs can you put 12 year olds into? I'm really curious.

And I'm sure it's clear that putting anyone into a mental institution costs the state far more than providing resources to a school to deal with this would cost? Psychologists, separate classes, teachers specialized in this. We struggle to put people with actual mental problems into mental health insititutions(because there are so few and they cost a fortune to run) but we'd start putting misbehaving kids in them?

12 year olds? My son was hammering nails into wood and drilling into masonry at 8. The Bedouin children are in the fields unsupervised with the goats at age 6. 12 year olds are not babies.

Both my daughters were skydiving at 9. Kids can do a lot.

Some dysfunctional kids are there because of trauma, others because of opportunism and poor impulse control they'll eventually grow out of, and some are fundamentally defective and no amount of support will make them less destructive or dangerous to themselves and others.

Psychopathy and narcissism are psychological/emotional disabilities. They're the emotional equivalent of being born without a limb - or in congenital cases, without the brain structures needed for empathy and adult risk management.

I don't know what to do with these people. No one does.

I do know they're the single biggest threat to our future as a species, because if they get into positions of power they wreak havoc on unimaginable scales.

And even if they don't, they reliably leave a trail of wreckage behind them, because their relationships are defined by lies, gaslighting, and emotional and physical violence.

Unfortunately we have limited tools for diagnosis, so there's no way to know for sure if a problem teen can be rescued, or if they're guaranteed to become a problem adult.

> They're the emotional equivalent of being born without a limb

For start we could stop cutting part of their limbs shortly after birth. Doing this to dogs is considered too cruel and banned, but somehow it is ok for little boys?

> some are fundamentally defective and no amount of support

No need for support, just stop harming them!

It’s been said that the British executed about 1% of their population each year for a few hundred years, and that a similar number died in prison.

The claim is that this made Britain a much safer country in later centuries.

So other kids should just be their victims? How is that better?

We should do whatever we can to help kids with problems, but that doesn't include victimising people. Remove the bullies and deal with them elsewhere.