If a kid breaks a school rule, suspend him! This is a bit of wisdom I’ve never quite understood, especially when I was teaching.
Let me get this straight. We believe that an education is the primary vehicle for success and that all kids should have access to it. In fact, studies show that education is the most sure way to lift a child out of poverty in his adulthood and make it more likely that his children will not have to grow up in poverty. We also know that kids who have pressures on them like poverty are the most likely to act out and earn detention.
Once off detention, a kid faces school staff who have labeled him a “troublemaker,” and he has work he must make up, taking time from already overburdened teachers. Some teachers or schools have policies that say that a kid may NOT make up any tests, homework, or other schoolwork missed while on suspension, which leaves a gap in skill/concept mastery that interferes with later mastery which is built on what he missed. His detention, then, has put him behind.
Sure, he might “learn his lesson” and not re-offend…maybe. But how many kids with behavior problems realize what they have missed and its importance?
Tell me again how suspension from school benefits a kid or the society he will live in as an adult?
