If you eliminate school suspensions for actions that make it difficult – sometimes impossible – for teachers to teach anything, how will students learn anything?
Excerpted from Jill Tucker\’s disheartening article at sfgate.com:
Mouthing off in class or failing to follow a teacher\’s instructions will no longer lead to suspension in Oakland schools, a ban that will be phased in and be fully in effect just over a year from now, the school board unanimously decided Wednesday night.
Oakland Unified will become one of a handful of California school districts that restrict suspensions to more serious offenses and eliminate the punishment for willful defiance – a broad category of misbehavior that includes minor offenses such as refusing to take a hat off or ignoring teacher requests to stop texting and more severe incidents like swearing at a teacher or storming out of class. San Francisco and Los Angeles are also among those districts.
As in other urban districts, African American students are disproportionately among those suspended, specifically for willful defiance in Oakland.
Student Dan\’enicole Williams, a McClymonds High School sophomore, said the ban will force educators and administrators to focus on why students are behaving a certain way rather than just suspending them.
“We\’re getting pushed out of schools,” said Dan\’enicole, 15, who is African American and Italian American. “They don\’t care about us.”
What you just read is sick. And horrible. And heartbreaking.
If a “student” who mouths off at his/her teacher or others in the class, does whatever he/she wants instead of following a teacher\’s instructions, and curses out the teacher or others in class at will, is impervious to being removed…
…it will encourage and incent others to act the same way (why should the kid next to me be able to do this and not me?)…
…which means that, since teachers must follow strict rules of behavior and students no longer have to…
…teachers therefore become subordinates to the most ill-behaved “students” in their classes…
…which makes it impossible for any learning to take place, regardless of how many students want to learn…
…which means that Oakland children will join children in other areas with the same kind of rules, who will not learn a damn thing…
…which means that they will wind up uneducated and unprepared for the world, other than having acquired the belief that doing whatever they damn well feel like doing, whenever they damn well feel like doing it, is just fine.
And when these uneducated, unprepared, young people, who geniuses like the entire Oakland Board Of Education have sanctioned as feral rather than civilized, go into the real world, what do you think will happen to them?
What do you think they will become?
And who do you think the Oakland Board Of Education and its supporters will blame for what they become?
This is a tragedy. It is a horrible punishment for Black children worse than any punishment meted out to those who used to be, but no longer will be, suspended.
Congratulations to the Oakland Board of Education. I have no doubt what is left of the ku klux klan is overjoyed with your decisions.
Why shouldn\’t they be? They can use this to “prove” everything they say about Black people.
