This article talks about how a teacher from Rail Road Flat Elementary School, Randall Youngblood, handles his class of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders through discipline. Discipline and the kind of teach-to-the-test learning that has become endemic in the era of No Child Left Behind has kept his students' energy channeled. Such rote learning often gets frowned upon in the schools of better-educated, more affluent communities. But in a 549-person town named for a type of mule-driven rail-and-mining-cart arrangement that has been obsolete for a hundred years, it is working. Accepting setbacks and persevering despite them is a useful object lesson, but he knows that discipline and hard work will get anyone only so far. He sees the patterns repeat themselves--former students faltering, dropping out, getting into trouble. Once his 6th graders leave his classroom of order and learning, bound for adolescence in the shadow of poverty and few appealing job prospects, he knows there is nothing he can do to keep their worlds from crumbling around them. He just have to assure them as best he can that they will succeed.