Suspension isn’t much of a punishment for students with a TV, cell phones, video games, a parent-free house and no homework, the Washington Post notes.
This was Kymber and Shawnte Andre-Sanders’s punishment early this month:The Prince William County sisters spent the day in their pajamas, luxuriating in front of the television, contemplating 50 Cent’s song “Window Shopper,” T.G.I. Friday’s chicken-sandwich commercial and, occasionally, such CNN news flashes as “Elvis Foils Robbers.”
There’s little stigma in suspension either.
Girls scratching and biting at a bus stop with the parents joining in. Once this was unheard of. The school is apparently so swamped with this kind of discipline issue that they can’t be bothered to figure out who was at fault. Either that or they beleive they can’t use discretion in such incidents for fear of lawsuits. The parents expect the teachers to do the extra work involved in pulling together the students’ classwork for them. The students squander the day in front of the TV while their parents are away at work.
So much is wrong here you don’t know where to start.
Stigma?!?! It’s like an honor.
My husband learned to exploit the whole suspension system as a jr. high student. He was extremely gifted (taught himself algebra in 3rd grade & geometry in 4th) and earning all A’s without effort. Since his school didn’t allow acceleration, he was constantly bored in school. He was made to sit next to the troublemaking kids in the class to control them (since he was going to max out the standardized tests anyway). Thus, he became the target of bullying. Though he was very tall and athletic, he was a mild-mannered, gentle-spirited kid. His parents taught him that if he was attacked, he was to defend himself. The first time he did so, he was suspended under a zero tolerance policy. This was heaven to him, as he discovered that he could complete a week’s schoolwork in less than 1 day! This left him a whole week to read, experiment, and work on computers to his heart’s content. In 7th and 8th grade he didn’t start any fights, but he didn’t walk away from them either, because he found that suspension liberated him from inane group projects and wasted classroom time. His mom finally had a talk with the principal, and explained that if he really wanted her son to stop fighting, they would need to come up with a more creative punishment.
Now in my family, however, suspension had a huge stigma attached to it, and I would have been in MEGA trouble at home on top of the suspension, depending on the offense. If I had ever been suspended for the times I fought back against bullies, however, my parents probably would have had a serious talk with me, but I wouldn’t have been in trouble with them. There is a difference, however, between fighting back against a bully in self-defense, and continuing a fight that someone else started. Stopping the bully long enough to run away and get help is different than pummeling him/her until an adult breaks it up.
Well I Went to a Jesuit High School. IF you got suspended you got to come in and spend quality time with Mr. Waterhouse, the plant supervisor. You got to unclog toilets, rake leaves and do whatever he told you to do. No one ever wanted to do it more than once.
Back in the ’80s, we had “in-school” suspension, which amounted to a few extra hours of study hall — but the Jesuits sound like they have the trick. Yeesh, was being sent hom ever a punishment?
The suspension is a relief for the students and teachers who don’t need to be bothered. As much as education costs, I would institute a three strike rule and ban disrupters forever, with correspondence courses available if wanted but no more classrooms ever.
When I was a kid in the 70s, there were two tiers of suspension: in-school (often Saturday) suspension, which meant the kid came in and did schoolwork in a room, alone (with a teacher or principal supervising). There was also out-of-school suspension that was reserved for “hardened cases”
I guess I was Miss Goody Two Shoes because I remember suspension as seeming like a big horrible deal that had a huge stigma attached to it (then again, the one time I was threatened with afterschool detention - and I wasn’t even really guilty, it was the girls AROUND me who were talking in class - I burst into tears and ran out of the room). I think even for the less prissy students, there WAS some stigma to suspension, back in the 70s….it was a mark of being a “bad kid,” and that was before “bad” meant “good”
I have to say though that I like the Jesuits’ idea, but I bet there are laws that would prevent it from being instituted in public schools. Pity, really. Another option would be to let the kids do community service picking up trash on the roadside for the term of their suspension.
We have two types of suspension where I work : ‘in school’ suspension which is a day long study hall and regular suspension.
We try to avoid the regular suspension as much as we can. For our at-risk kids, a day of suspension usually means a day out hanging out in the streets or in the projects. In school suspension is much more constraining to those students.
Out of school suspension only seems to work with those kids whose parents give a lot of importance to this punishment and stigmatize it. It’s hardly a full proof solution, but sometimes it becomes necessary so that the teachers and the class can take a much needed break.
“I bet there are laws that would prevent it from being instituted in public schools.”
Yes that could be a problem. It might be forbidden to use students to do the work of the paid support staff. But, I remember my classmates assisting the librarian in the high school library. A professional teacher might be required to supervise the student’s work detail. I do not know of any teachers who would find this worth doing. I could imagine some parents going to court because of the degrading punishment of cleaning the school and its grounds.
But, I really do like the idea! Can you imagine the looks on the on the students when they see a suspended student assisting in the cafeteria, cleaning a bathroom, digging a dry well, sweeping the parking lot or shovelling snow? Can you imagine the insults? I do not think anyone would be repeating the experience.
One other downside: Some might drop out rather than submit to it.
“Yeesh, was being sent hom ever a punishment?” I think that if my father had ever been sent home from school, first his parents would have paddled him, and then he’d have spent the time working in the fields. There wasn’t much mechanization on their farm, and that gave kids with any brains at all a powerful motive to pay attention in school and learn enough to get some non-farming job!
With TV’s, etc., and parents who are unable or unwilling to stay home and supervise, at-home suspension seems more like a reward than a punishment. OTOH, if my kid had been suspended for defemding himself, I’d have made sure he kept up with his studies and hoped he’d enjoy the time off otherwise.
I got suspended in HS for smoking pot in the parking lot. What do you think I did on my day off?
At a school in NJ, someone told me that both the bully AND the victim are suspended for any violence. What sense does that make? One teenager recently slugged another in his face breaking the kid’s jaw and dislodging four teeth. The punishment was 2 weeks suspension for BOTH students. THe parents of the victims are suing the parents of the bully. Schools don’t take sides in criminal matters, I guess.