Here is an interesting Ackoff story that I actually transcribed myself in 2007. He talks about how he helped deal with a gang problem in a Philadelphia ghetto by starting a special education program that let them learn whatever they wanted. The results were astounding. Here is a snippet of the story:
Now several things happened in the course. Some of it, and this is just an aside, but about 3 or 4 days after the course began, I got a call from the engineering college which was the building in which this class was meeting. They said to come over immediately there was a crisis. One of the kids in the class was hot that day, it was in the spring so it was hot, took his coat off and he had a gun in his belt, it was conspicuous. And he walked out of the classroom to find the men’s room and he couldn’t find it. He walked into an office to ask the secretary. You can imagine what happened. She screamed and immediately everybody came running. Of course the supposition was he was there to rape her. And so it was a great big fuss and it took a while to get it settled and we finally convinced the attendees not to carry guns to class.
