“Why
do schools suspend students so much? All you’re doing is giving students a
vacation. It doesn’t teach them anything but to misbehave to get what they
want."
With that logic, then adults should
come to work and refuse to do anything. When they are told they’d better get to
work or they’re going to get written up, then they should cause a scene, maybe
call their boss a few unprintable, four-letter names, and then storm out of the
office against orders to stay or else.
I mean, don’t all adults want a
vacation?
Especially when the going gets tough?
If that’s how it really works,
shouldn’t all adults use this method of “vacation acquisition”?
Let’s try an experiment, Mom and Dad.
Your next day at work, try acting that way, making sure you call your boss
something that rhymes with “trucker,” and then come back and post in the
comment section the results. How long of a vacation did you receive? Make sure you tell us. Inquiring minds want to know.
Can you see the sarcasm dripping off
your monitor? Do you understand why I am being so acerbic? If this “logic”
doesn’t apply to adults, why is it supposed to be different with our children?
Our students? Our schools? Are we not supposed to be training them for the real
world? Are we not supposed to show them there are serious consequences for really
poor actions? That actions have consequences? That respect for people in
positions of authority is a good thing to learn?
If schools are “giving students a
vacation,” then we have to ask why getting to stay home is so enjoyable. For
me, growing up, if I got suspended, I knew life at home would have been a
living Hades. School would have looked like a movie theater, a theme park, a
football game, or any other place I would have loved to frequent. Therefore, if
a suspension becomes a vacation, then we have to ask some tough questions as
parents.
Question
#1: Am I, as a parent, supporting bad behaviors by being
supportive of my student when I know his or her actions are wrong? It’s one
thing to support our children through thick and thin by never leaving them nor
forsaking them, regardless of how they act, but a parent can still do that and discipline the child. Right?
Question
#2: When my child is home because of a suspension, why
are they allowed to do what they want to do? Why do we, as parents, allow it to
be vacation-like? Should we not reinforce the consequences at home and band
together with the school to teach good behavior? When a parent positions
himself or herself in-between the student and the school (and we’re talking
about legitimate offenses here), all it does is drive a wedge between the
student, the family, and the school. This empowers the student’s negative
behavior and makes it worse, not better. The goal should be to correct the
behavior and promote better behavior for next time. This takes a concerted effort with the school being supported by the parent when the punishment is justified.
Question
#3: When a child disrupts a class to the point where a
teacher has to continually stop teaching to get the student with poor behavior
to cease and desist, when does the education of the other twenty or so students
come into play? When is their education more important than one ill-behaved
student who’d rather destroy a classroom than be educated?
More and more students are being pulled from schools and placed in private
schools or home-schooled by parents who are tired of their students’ education
being sacrificed while students who don’t know how to behave are allowed to
remain in classes with little or no consequence for their actions.
In education, a teacher must be
concerned about his or her students. All of them. Twenty or so at a time. Class
by class. An administrator has to be concerned about not just the twenty or so
in a particular class, he or she has to be concerned about all the students on campus. That could be thousands.
Logic would dictate that if one student is allowed to conduct
himself or herself in a manner that should receive punishment warranting a
suspension, then the teacher must allow the other twenty or so to act the same
way, get away with the same behaviors, etc. Same goes for the administrator. If
one is allowed to curse out a teacher and call them something that rhymes with “trucker,”
then he or she must allow the other thousand or more students do the same with
no consequences.
Question #4: What kind of school would they have
in about two weeks?
I’ll tell you what kind. The kind at
which no one would want to teach, administrate, or attend. If you’ve never seen
the movie Lean on Me, starring Morgan
Freeman, maybe you should. Joe Clark, the real-life New Jersey principal
Freeman portrays in the movie, knew what bad behavior allowed to run amuck
could do to a school.
He also knew how good the school could
be.
So, when your child gets suspended,
ask yourself as a parent this:
Queston #5: What
do I want my child to learn?
Isn’t that the point of education,
after all?
*Generic photos courtesy of
freedigitalphotos.net
_____________________________________
Short Bio
C. KEVIN THOMPSON is an
ordained minister with a B.A. In Bible (Houghton College, Houghton, NY), an
M.A. in Christian Studies (Wesley Biblical Seminary, Jackson, MS), and an M.Ed.
in Educational Leadership (National-Louis University, Wheeling, IL). He presently
works as an assistant principal in a middle school. He also has several years
experience as an administrator at the high school level.
A former Language Arts teacher,
Kevin decided to put his money where his mouth was and write, fiction mostly.
Now, years later, he is a member of the Christian Authors Network (CAN), American
Christian Fictions Writers (ACFW), and Word Weavers International. He is the
Chapter President of Word Weavers-Lake County (FL), and his published works
include two award-winning novels, The
Serpent’s Grasp (Winner of the 2013 Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers
Conference Selah Award for First Fiction) and 30 Days Hath Revenge - A Blake Meyer Thriller: Book 1, as well as articles in The Wesleyan Advocate, The Preacher, Vista, The Des Moines
Register and The Ocala Star-Banner.
Kevin is a huge fan of the TV
series 24 , The Blacklist, Blue Bloods,
and Criminal Minds, loves anything to
do with Star Trek, and is a Sherlock
Holmes fanatic, too.
Facebook: C. Kevin Thompson – Author Page
Twitter: @CKevinThompson
Goodreads: C. Kevin Thompson
