When students fail repeatedly in school, they often become embedded in subcultural forces. Teachers often help to perpetuate students' deviance by labeling students and transmitting these labels to both adults and students by formal and informal means. Schools also reflect the existing social order, and their differential treatment is likely to produce resentment among lower class youth. The use of coercive power and corporal punishment to maintain control over students only increases students' alienation and aggressive behavior. Inconsistency and arbitrariness in discipline also promote alienation. Expulsion from school may simply give students more time to engage in delinquent acts. Most schools have adopted the medical model approach to delinquency prevention which emphasizes the children's problems. Prevention strategies would be more effective if emphasis was placed upon the institutional framework within which delinquency occurs. The article contains 70 footnotes.