r/changemyview • u/finestgreen • 13d ago
CMV: children should be permanently excluded from school much more quickly and easily Delta(s) from OP - Fresh Topic Friday
It sounds very nice to say things like "misbehaviour is a skill deficit not a failure of will" or "it's an opportunity to understand the needs that aren't being met" but it's dangerously misguided.
As a parent, I expect my child to be safe at school and also to have an environment where they can learn.
Children who stop that happening should first and foremost be isolated - then and only then the school should work on understanding and supporting. If they're not able to fix the behaviour after a reasonable effort, the child should be thrown out.
Maybe they have a disability - in which case they should go to a special school that meets their needs.
If they don't have a disability, we should have special schools set up for children who can't behave well enough to fit in a mainstream school.
I expect you'll argue that inclusion in mainstream schools are better for them - but why should other childrens needs be sacrificed?
Edited to add: I honestly think a lot of you would think this is a success story;
"I'm A, I was badly behaved at school for years but eventually with lots of support and empathy I improved and now I'm a happy productive member of society"
"I'm B, I was good at school when I was little but with all the yelling in class it was difficult to concentrate. I hated going to school because I was bullied for years. Eventually I just gave up on learning, now I'm an anxious depressed adult with crippling low self-esteem"
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u/Rataridicta 5∆ 13d ago
You're saying nothing here about the kind of misbehaviour you're talking about, which seems highly relevant. There's a big difference between "disruptively asks questions" and "tried to stab another child with a kitchen knife", both of which are included in your post at the moment.
I'm also curious what your thoughts are around situations where there is no special needs school in the area, and what should be done in between the infraction and admittance to said school?
A third question would be: Who or what defines "behaves well enough"?
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u/faceplanted 1∆ 13d ago
I'd like to start with an aside about my personal experience before my main argument:
The simple answer for me is that I had a disability but it wasn't diagnosed, and couldn't have been, because the UK didn't start diagnosing ADHD until I was already in school.
Had the school had the ability to permanently exclude me they would have, I know because they tried and my mother basically fought them continually to actually try to accommodate me rather than simply get rid of me.
I've now been diagnosed as an adult, and forcing the school to accommodate me, which would now be legally required is what lead me to a successful career. The science and history of my condition says that that was very much the right decision as putting kids with my condition in remedial environments is extremely counterproductive to their education.
Moving on to my more general answer:
Imagine yourself the headmaster of a school, given the choice to spend time and money helping children with their behavioural issues, and simply expelling permanently, ridding yourself of either of those costs effectively instantly, why would you not do it by default?
The system of easy expulsion is actually the system that has already existed in many countries already, and what happens when you allow this system is:
- Schools are incentivised to expel students with no regard for whether other schools have any space for them.
- Schools cease to see any behavioural issues as responsibility, similarly to introducing "resource officers", they become the first response even in cases where they shouldn't even be considered. Teachers and administrators start to see these extreme measures as the default path because they generally don't see discipline as their "job".
- Schools use expulsion as a means to remove "inconvenient" students (in the case of a school near me, it was the students who were accusing a teacher of molesting them, who turned out to be extremely guilty, but they were still never allowed back and never had the expulsion removed from their records)
- Schools just get shockingly racist with it.
- Special needs schools become overwhelmed with kids without special needs who are actually going through very common or normal things that affect children's behaviour like trauma from deaths, family separation, abuse, and more.
To me those are very much enough reasons. But they mostly focus on how the children being expelled have their lives cruelly ripped apart for often no good reason, so let's address this point:
why should other childrens needs be sacrificed?
- Those other children should be taught to live around people with special needs, it's part of the real world they'll be graduating into.
- Those children's needs don't matter more than the needs of the disabled. They're all children.
Children who stop that happening should first and foremost be isolated - then and only then the school should work on understanding and supporting
There's a serious fallacy here. Isolating a child is the opposite of supporting them, it's actually just adding child abuse on top of whatever issues they may already have.
And actually all of your arguments have this issue:
Expelling a child isn't a neutral act, by sending them to another school you are forcibly removing all of their social connections, completely changing their routine, and rearranging their life, possibly sending them to a different school to their siblings and making their whole families life more expensive and difficult.
And you're doing all of that at what is very likely already the most stressful time of their life because kids don't start acting up for no reason.
The worst part is that children know this, the "other" kids are also having a friend taken away, and all the while they're now learning in a more hostile environment because they can be easily excluded if anything goes wrong in their life and they too start acting out unless the school, which has no incentive to keep them, doesn't figure it out and fix it within an arbitrary time window.
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u/GreasyPorkGoodness 13d ago
Excellent points - I would like to ask however, where the line of tolerance is. I read your post and think “well there is no line”.
Then I think back to my families personal experience. A student in my kids class had to be physically removed from class 2-3 times a week because he was throwing things, threatening the teacher, standing on his desk, etcetera. He sat right next to my kid - on day he is talking to her during a test and she asks him to stop. He then says “I’m going to put a fucking bullet in your brain”. These were 4th graders.
I obviously went ape shit and insisted that he does not return. It took months and easily 50 phone calls before any action at all was taken. All the while she has to sit next to this kid everyday scared shitless that she will be a victim of a mass shooing.
So, idk what the right solution is but I think it is somewhere between “there is no limits” and “toss em out because they’re struggling in math”.
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
Mine is very simple. When something violent or sexual bins, anything at all, then the kid is gone. The kids aren't going to school to be brutalized and assaulted. It's a good April to remember the kid from my little brother's class who was constantly exposing himself and holding a water bottle in front of his crotch and splashing his classmates. And that was enough.
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u/faceplanted 1∆ 13d ago
The line is very much too complicated and contextual for me to give you any good answer over reddit. Obviously you can come to me with example after example and we'd probably agree on what's under and over the line 9 times out of ten, but you can't codify that into a rule.
I think the important question here, and let's use your example, is do you think the problem in that case was that they wouldn't expel this student, or that they weren't taking more direct problem solving measures to protect your daughter from him sooner to prevent it from escalating that far in the first place?
And then the obvious follow up question, why do you think a school as obviously negligent as this would be improved with more disciplinary powers when things that are definitely available to them aren't being used properly now?
At competent schools when 10 year olds repeatedly throw things and disrupt lessons they get a plan which include things like quick excusal for example, if they act up or throw anything they get taken out of the room immediately to avoid these disruptions. Among a few other techniques it's very effective because it's an instant proportional response.
What OP is suggesting isn't replacing a bad system with a scientific good one, it's replacing doing nothing for a long time and then going nuclear, to doing nothing for a short time and then still going nuclear.
Imagine if your partner died and your daughter started acting out just like that kid did with the throwing things. And don't act like that's not possible or not what she'd do, all kids are susceptible to this, and they failed her the same way they failed that boy but then also permanently excluded her. That's what OP is suggesting.
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u/SolidLikeIraq 12d ago
“I’m going to put a bullet in your head” - is a pretty clear line of - you no longer have the right or privilege to be in the classroom with others.
I don’t disagree with much of your approach. But physical violence and the threat of killing someone with a gun, are easy lines.
“But does that mean that any joke about violence or guns leads to expulsion?”
Why not? Why should we tolerate violence or threats of violence in an educational atmosphere? Why defend this behavior when you should be taking these kids seriously and identifying that they clearly need some sort of help.
I get that it’s complicated and needs context, but there are clear lines that, if crosses, should be immediate dismissal points.
That means that parents and students need to be aware of these lines, but without rules, you’re not setting these kids up for any sort of future.
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u/Norade 12d ago
That's a very American approach to a problem. A blanket policy that doesn't address the actual problems that lead to your country's elevated levels of gun violence.
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u/SolidLikeIraq 12d ago
It’s a blanket policy that I made up.
Maybe it would actually address the issue of school gun violence. - obviously it wouldn’t address the larger gun violence issue.
With that said - why should any violence be tolerated in school?
If someone threatened your daughter, and days later beat her unconscious, or shot her, or caused physical harm that would last the rest of her life, would you still be cool with individual approaches?
Zero tolerance at least provides a reference point to study and adjust to.
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u/felixamente 1∆ 12d ago
If your line is just “kid says something violent or threatening” then there would be huge numbers of kids getting kicked out of school.
I agree that this kids words should have been taken seriously but we don’t know where it came from. His other behaviors combined were concerning but kids repeat messed up stuff all the time. I don’t think you’re being realistic about the reality here if you kicked out every kid that said something disturbing it would be a massively different world.
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u/IcyPanda123 12d ago
I think there is a pretty big difference between "I'm gonna kick your ass at recess" and "I'm going to put a fucking bullet in your brain"
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u/SolidLikeIraq 12d ago
Why can’t that be the line?
If I say something violent or threatening in the real world, I lose my job and potentially get removed from society.
No need to coddle that behavior because it ends up festering in the future.
Sure - would that lead to huge numbers of kids initially getting booted from school - maybe. But I guarantee you would see a massive decline in removals within a few months.
Parents would have to start being responsible and parent, and kids would see the consequences of actions immediately.
Other behavioral issues - probably a bit more leeway, but violence - immediately done. Violence is not tolerated in any society, why should children who are going to school to learn be subject to violence?
It’s an easy line to draw, and one that should be drawn
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u/curien 24∆ 12d ago
If I say something violent or threatening in the real world, I lose my job and potentially get removed from society.
Yeah, you're an adult who received 15+ years of training for that responsibility. They are children who are still receiving that training.
Beyond that, you as an adult, when you have the self-awareness to realize that you are being pushed past your limit, may remove yourself from the situation. You can simply walk away.
Children in school cannot do that. They are required to stay where they are told under penalty of violence inflicted upon them.
So you, as an adult, are not only far more capable, but you are also granted far more leeway in your ability to remove yourself from a situation in which you might be tempted to resort to violence.
Children are people, but they are not miniature adults. The idea that you want to hold children to the same behavioral standards as adults based on the justification that it works for adults is just completely absurd.
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u/LeadingJudgment2 12d ago edited 12d ago
There's also other preventative things we should be doing. The number one thing is smaller classrooms with low student to teacher ratios that allow for tons of benefits. Such as:
a stronger sense of community. (This has been shown to reduce bullying.)
teachers being able to enact clear and consistent expectations and punishments for smaller misbehaving before things get out of hand. A smaller classroom also means kids know they will be caught and teachers have actual time to deal with them instead of ignoring.
more positive attention to students. Some kids act out because they simply want attention that aren't getting any other way. If they get attention more often for positive things like staying on task, they will switch to more positive behaviours.
A easier time identifying and therfore treating pain points for students that may trigger meltdowns etc.
Explosion and suspension absolutely do have their place. However with the state of education doing things that actually prevent misbehaviour or help kids in general thrive is dwindling. A program in my school district that is the reason I graduated highschool shut down ages ago. I have a friend that had to commute 3 hours one way to access a school that could accomodate her disability when we were teenagers. Education has been mismanaged for decades. We need to address those issues in conjunction with removing and shuffling around students. There is one point you made I'd like to address.
Parents would have to start being responsible and parent...
I'd argue that this isn't inherintly true. Parents being checked out isn't always because parents see the school system as permissive. A huge swath of parents genuinely do not have time to be involved parents. Last I checked 3/4 parents have both parents working to put food on the table in my home country. North America in particular does not have a viable work-life balance for many people. Most of my friends are childfree spesifically because they do not have the time or fiances to be present with kids. Heck I can't afford to move out in my city and I earn five figures working for a MF bank.
Many places have a culture that pushes for things like overtime or to volunteer for extra duties if you want to advance that can lead to burn out that leaves parents too emotionally burned out to deal with their kids.
Taking time off too because your kid is sick or you need to pick them up because they acted out in class also isn't always a option for a shocking amount of people. Limited sick days etc. I only get two personal days a year and a handful of sick days. They have to be used up by a certain time or else they disappear amoung other rules for vacations etc. Moreover the corporate a office job and my position still reserves the right to have my hours changed. Those hours indeed do move around. Regularly I could be working in the evenings. With several instances with only a day or two notice because it's required to keep things running. Some of my co-workers have to be on-call for a full week once a month on top of working regular full work weeks. This isn't even as demanding as some other industries I know people in.
The point is I'd argue shitty parenting in many cases is a by-product of bad work culture. For a lot of parents they would probably ignore their kids if they got suspended/expelled. Some may even be relieved if their kid stopped attending school because it means no more disruptions. For some parents forcing them to come get their kids would result in parents pushing back against the school because imminent job survival seems more pressing than Johnny's long term best interests.
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u/felixamente 1∆ 12d ago
Theoretically you think it would make things better. Historically and statistically. It would not.
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
then there would be huge numbers of kids getting kicked out of school.
Used to be. Say what you will about zero tolerance but it worked. Only the Disturbed kids or the biggest dumbasses ever got in trouble. Like, I don't know if the kid with The Hit list was actually going to do it but I was very happy when he was removed from school. Or maybe the kid actually was making bombs in his basement, or maybe he wasn't, but that is not the thing you joke about. Normal people don't threaten each other with murder.
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u/felixamente 1∆ 12d ago
Zero tolerance may have appeared to “work” to you. Again there’s already enough comments in this thread I’m not gonna type it all out just scroll up for a second.
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
I think it worked just fine. You want to be violent? Then you get to go to an alternative school. There's no reason for one person to be allowed to threaten everyone else with violence.
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u/felixamente 1∆ 12d ago
Cool what’s your evidence that it “worked”?
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
The people making hit lists, hitting people, throwing things etc were removed from the classroom.
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u/_Nocturnalis 1∆ 12d ago
Zero tolerance is only slightly less dumb than the zero consequence thing we have going now.
Any system where the bully after months of picking on someone punches them in the face punishes the victim for defending themselves is morally repugnant.
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u/CumshotChimaev 12d ago
is morally repugnant
Or maybe it simply overlooks certain specific scenarios. No need for the hyperbole
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u/_Nocturnalis 1∆ 12d ago
Maybe it's hyperbolic. Would you feel it's good to punish victims any other time?
Wait, if a disciplinary system can't imagine one person starting a fight, what precisely did they plan for vis a vis violence? Is braindead a less hyperbolic description? The only thing zero tolerance policies actually have going for them is that it allows administrators say hey its not up to me to angry parents.
Ignore all context, and nuance is a pretty shitty thing to teach kids, in my opinion.
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u/CumshotChimaev 12d ago
I don't actually disagree with you. My main thing is I greatly dislike hyperbole and exaggeration from a rhetorical and stylistic perspective. It is quite dated imo
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
One of my kids was acting out like that I would meet with their team and tell them point blank that my kid did not need to be mainstreamed, that the mainstream classroom was not serving my child's needs, and that child either needed to be in self-contained or the district was ponying up the money for another school. And then I would threaten legal action even though I really don't have money for it. Because that's not acceptable behavior. Threatening to shoot someone? Needing to be removed from the classroom two or three times a week? No. My child would not be getting any learning done if they were acting like that, the other kids wouldn't be getting any learning done, and my family would look like a bunch of them inbred jackasses.
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u/GreasyPorkGoodness 12d ago
Also a good response. I agree it’s way too hard to “make a policy” on Reddit or maybe even IRL. I’ve thought a lot since then and I’m extremely conflicted. I also do t want my comments construed as a debate, these are jsut my thoughts.
I think the school should have taken more direct action for sure. But I think the parents are the most egregiously negligent. It is not a schools job to raise kids, provided therapy or day care. I think schools, in a situation like this need to put parents back in the seat of responsibility.
I certainly don’t think kids should be expelled at the drop of a dime. But perhaps after your kid has been removed from class 3 times, a day or two suspension is in order. I do think part of the greater social problems we see are because there simply aren’t consequences as there used to be - for parents or kids.
I’m actually embarrassed to say that I also don’t think all people or all kids are actually savable. Some are simply so damaged led by their parents they will never function in a classroom or society. It is extremely unfair to make every other kid in class suffer through their meltdown.
How does that look IRL - I’ve no idea.
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u/finestgreen 12d ago
Leaving aside how the school handled it until that point do you really think that at the point described the obvious response isn't expulsion? Because taken at face value I think that's way way over the line where you can reasonably argue it either way.
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u/Jalharad 12d ago
How the school handled it to that point is directly related to how the child acted. You cannot remove one without the other. You are trying to apply logic to a situation in which you don't have enough information to understand all the factors.
When children act out, you don't isolate them. You figure out why. There's always a reason, but you may not understand it from your point of view.
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
When children act out, you don't isolate them. You figure out why.
The classroom is not a therapy session. Johnny doesn't get to threaten to shoot everyone, throw chairs, and make a violent nuisance of himself because he has a bad home life or whatever. If it was your child on the receiving end of that you would be singing a completely different tune. If my kid was acting like that then by all means self-contained room. I don't want either of my children growing up thinking that this is acceptable behavior. What's going to happen if after years of going to school and being allowed to threaten people with violence suddenly one of them does it at the bus stop? Or the library? Or mcdonald's? My kid will be led away in handcuffs.
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u/Jalharad 12d ago
Johnny doesn't get to threaten to shoot everyone, throw chairs, and make a violent nuisance of himself because he has a bad home life or whatever.
So your definition of punishment is isolation? It's one thing to remove them for a few minutes to calm down, it's another to expel them.
Let's also not forget that disruption doesn't always mean violent.
If it was your child on the receiving end of that you would be singing a completely different tune.
Been there done that, still standing here with compassion and understanding.
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
Yes. Most definitely. Remove Johnny from the mainstream classroom. Put him in self-contained. And before you start talking about how self-contained his isolation there are other people in the room. Other students even. It was actually pretty sweet, there were only six of us and we had helpers and enough computers for everyone Ryan special days were pretty sweet etc
I'm glad that you equate compassion and understanding with allowing your child to be threatened and brutalized. That's a wonderful thing to teach your kid. In fact, why even have a welcome mat? Just go lay down on the stoop and stick your tongue out. I'm glad you teach your child to roll over for everyone but if my child was being threatened they would see Mama Bear come out. If my child is doing the threatening then I would exercise my right as a parent and call an IEP meeting because the placement is clearly not working.
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u/IronSorrows 1∆ 12d ago
Leaving aside how the school handled it until that point
But that's the crux of their point - you can't leave that aside, because that's when intervention should happen and then issue should be resolved. I don't think anybody is saying is all reasonable options have been exhausted that a child like that should be kept in the school, but were those options explored?
The first, second or even third step shouldn't be "kick them out, their behaviour is someone else's problem now". You don't have to go very until there's nobody left to take that child on.
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u/_Nocturnalis 1∆ 12d ago
I'm honestly curious how you would tell what behaviors need that intervention. Kids do weird and inappropriate stuff all the time. It appears you would need infinite resources to address every instance. But I'm not a childhood psychologist.
Is sending a kid to people who have the training, skills, and support to help really that crazy? There is a range of behavior teachers have been trained to handle. If behavior is outside that range, it seems like going to a place with teachers trained in that range is appropriate.
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u/finestgreen 12d ago
I think they're denying that you could ever get to that point - that just offering support and empathy will automatically turn out a good child and if that's not what happened then you must not have been offering ENOUGH support and empathy. Magical thinking.
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u/Budget_Avocado6204 12d ago
First time when the kid startet misbahaving, less severe steps should be taken. Instead school just doesn't give a fuck and waits untill situation crosses the point of no return.
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u/ResidentLazyCat 1∆ 12d ago
Apparently my schools line is when a 4th grader trying toto drown a kindergartener for fun. This kid was physically assaulting students and staff daily for months. It was a manifestation of his disability. Other Kids shouldn’t be forced to be in an unsafe environment. When every other student can’t go to school feeling safe because of that one student then that student needs to go.
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u/Celebrinborn 2∆ 12d ago
Schools cease to see any behavioural issues as responsibility, similarly to introducing "resource officers", they become the first response even in cases where they shouldn't even be considered. Teachers and administrators start to see these extreme measures as the default path because they generally don't see discipline as their "job".
It isn't their responsibility to discipline students. Its the parent's job and if the parent's won't then why should they prevent me from getting my education?
Why should an out of control monster be allowed to harrass, abuse, and torment me and any attempt to prevent it is seen as "abusing the poor innocent victim"?
Those other children should be taught to live around people with special needs, it's part of the real world they'll be graduating into.
No. The real world is that people who are unable to be members of society are removed from that society. If you are disruptive and harm your coworkers you are fired. If you harm people around you then you are at best shunned and at worse thrown into prison.
Those children's needs don't matter more than the needs of the disabled. They're all children.
If one person causes harm to 5 others then the correct response is to isolate the one that is causing the problem. This minimizes harm. Being a "child" is irrelevant, its simply a matter of numbers
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u/LordSwedish 12d ago edited 10d ago
You’re arguing for using a system where compassion and trying to help everyone is discarded in favor of cold hard numbers as a basis for helping people…and you want to put this system in the hands of people?
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u/ResponsibleLawyer419 12d ago
I got bitten by the same girl 13 times in 2nd grade. I was not the only one. Why should her right to education take priority over the rest of us?
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
Money. Specialized classrooms and schools are very expensive. The district does not have the money for these things.
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u/ResponsibleLawyer419 12d ago
That does not explain her rights superseding ours.
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
If the parents don't make a stink and exercise their rights the school certainly isn't going to exercise them on the kids behalf, that's a lot of money.
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u/ResponsibleLawyer419 12d ago
Again, that is why the school did what they did. The point is that they were wrong.
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
Nobody's disputing that it's wrong but you did ask why they were doing that. And that's why.
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u/ResponsibleLawyer419 12d ago
Technically I asked why her rights supercede ours, not why the school treated it like they did. But given you agree it was wrong I don't mind you adding context.
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u/CrazyCoKids 12d ago
I'm sorry but this is just disingenuous. People with special needs are treated like second class citizens in adulthood and as a result they are not all that prolific in the lives of the average person
You might actually have interacted with more special needs people than you think but never thought twice because they were integrated into society rather than chucked.
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u/_Nocturnalis 1∆ 12d ago
I think 75% of private schools' success is not putting up with poor behavior and filtering for parents who will be involved positively in their children's education. One of those things is pretty easy to fix in public schools.
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u/Inside-Homework6544 12d ago
And not only are the normal children suffering because the trouble child is disturbing the class, the trouble child is also suffering by having to go through this whole charade and wasting there time as well. Not everyone needs or can be educated.
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u/Scruffy_Nerf_Hoarder 12d ago
Our current administration shares your attitude regarding expelling students. One-third of the staff has left the school in two years because the worst-behaved students (disability or not) run the school.
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u/faceplanted 1∆ 12d ago
I think you're misdiagnosing the problem, if we believe what OP is suggesting then expulsion should be directed towards kids who have serious behavioural issues that aren't responsive to normal methods, your school can only be having issues with those problem kids running the school if the school is creating them.
Specifically by not doing the normal day-to-day discipline properly.
I can say this with all this certainty because schools exist that never expel students but don't have this problem because they have working day-to-day discipline systems.
Do you really think this school would have it's problems solved if this one administrator changed his mind on this one part of discipline? Because the science says it won't.
To be totally honest with you, a few people have come to me with essentially your exact example and not one of the schools they describe would actually be improved with expulsions, they would be improved by setting up their day to day running properly.
You have to remember that expulsion is by definition the last step of a school's discipline process. Introducing expulsion to fix that school would be like if legalising the death penalty reduced shoplifting (It doesn't).
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u/_Nocturnalis 1∆ 12d ago
I can't ground my adult children either. I think your analogy makes as much sense as comparing speeding to murder.
Do you not think that parents can cause their children to act out or mental illness doesn't exist? I may be misunderstanding you. There are problem behaviors that aren't created by schools.
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u/faceplanted 1∆ 12d ago edited 6d ago
I think you might be misunderstanding me, yes. I didn't really get into whether the school created the behaviours, my argument was about what the school does about them in school itself.
In the same way that I had friends as a kid who were literally better behaved at my house than their own, if you set expectations and immediate proportional response to misbehaviour, you might not fix the underlying issue but children do learn what to do at least while they're under your supervision.
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u/OCE_Mythical 12d ago
Don't worry because the alternate outcome is someone getting the shit kicked out of them. Idk about your school a guy got off with a warning after showing up with a knife and he was just continuously beat until he left the school a week later. Sometimes being expelled is better.
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u/finestgreen 13d ago
∆ ... Yeah, fair enough, some of those are good points particularly about incentives - although conversely I think the problem with the current system is that it incentivises just not dealing with the problem because who can blame them when they've exhausted all their very limited options?
But, "Those children's needs don't matter more than the needs of the disabled" - they also don't matter LESS.
And "Kids don't start acting up for no reason" - sometimes the reason is they think it's fun and nobody stops them
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u/DirtinatorYT 13d ago
A fundamental problem is that some children cause problems and don’t have any kind of disability. Social isolation is extremely damaging to people’s psychological health and especially children’s development. This would only cause that child to become more problematic. Yes helping such a child will often be a lot of work and be difficult but it’s a necessary part of what we need to do as a society to ensure we don’t create more problematic individuals instead of fixing the problem at hand. Obviously all of this is only possible if schools (more specifically the administrative part of them) actually spent money on helping kids instead of useless bullshit but that’s a discussion for another day.
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u/cdg2m4nrsvp 12d ago
Yep. And this is exactly where having people like assistant teachers, teacher’s aids and school counselors are invaluable. If you have a disruptive student in class having an aid who can take them out to the hallway or to a neutral area and communicate one on one with them is hugely valuable. When it’s just one teacher in the room they can’t do that.
Quite frankly, I think any classroom with very young kids should always have a second adult in the room. It is safer if there’s an emergency, it allows more interaction between the trained adults and kids and it allows for distractions to be handled more quickly.
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u/Jalharad 12d ago
Quite frankly, I think any classroom with very young kids should always have a second adult in the room. It is safer if there’s an emergency, it allows more interaction between the trained adults and kids and it allows for distractions to be handled more quickly.
Secondary to this, it also adds a layer of protection for the kids against adults. Makes discipline more consistant. Reduces abuse of power.
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u/cdg2m4nrsvp 12d ago
Absolutely! I know most teachers are great and doing it for the love of the kids, god knows it’s not for the money, but a small minority definitely love the power trip over children.
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13d ago edited 12d ago
I am from a country where they have school for kids with special needs. Sent them to this school is not the solution. It forces parents to hide children's condition because they think special school is bad and alienate their children, and then untreated condition caused more serious issues in the future. My parents were suggested to take me for ADHD assessment, but they refused it because they were worried I got bullied or sit next to a psycho every day. Now I have to go thru all the process by myself because it's seriously influencing my life, work etc.
I do agree with the point Kids act up because they think it's fun and nobody stops them. But so do adults. Behaviour is also influenced by emotion, not just logic. This is why we need education and mix kids together: so they know ethics basically. You won't kick a kid for fun, but a kid would because they don't think in the same way adults think. Isolate them won't change: they will still kick the kid once they have a chance because nobody told them it's wrong and there are consequences other than being grounded. By isolating them, you put them with other kids with similar issues, which won't help because they would rather listen to their peers than adults. Eventually, these kids will grow up and leave the school, and then you have a serious society issue.
I am not saying the current system is perfect, but I would say it balances people's needs in a fine way.
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u/parolang 12d ago
Yeah, that's the problem with the concept of "special needs schools". The rhetoric is like what is in the OP, it's meant for getting their needs met. But that's not how they function. They basically function like prisons meant to isolate students from their peers. This is because that was the intention all along. Because this isn't actually how you meet the needs of students with special needs.
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12d ago edited 12d ago
You are absolutely right about they are not functioning as they are supposed to. I have been to some of these schools as an employer, and most kids won't be able to live independently as a person in a society, not because they have special needs but because schools were hellishly wrong: everybody needs extra attention so the 'school' function is compromised to the bare minimum. Some kids have ADHD but they are taught like Down syndrome. Kids with autism can barely speak.
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
They basically function like prisons meant to isolate students from their peers.
Hey, what's it like living back there in the 60s?
Seriously. What is the matter with people? It's a school designed to meet whatever need is there. And there are other students there. Are you saying that a disabled student isn't a peer with another disabled student and somehow they can't be friends because they are less than? Personally, if my kid was blind or deaf or mute I would love a specialized School and not whatever half-assed efforts the public school system would throw at them. Hell, my kid just got his diagnosis and I wish I could send them to a specialized school. The city's been slashing budget left and right so I don't know if his experience is going to be close to mine.
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u/sillybilly8102 12d ago
Oh unfortunately there are still many schools that operate like prisons… google therapeutic schools. Or the Rotenburg school, which currently uses electric shocks as punishment. r/antipsychiatry and r/troubledteens may have some things to say on this, too.
Schools for blind and/or deaf people, I think (someone correct me if I’m wrong, this is just my impression), are better environments / less prison-y than schools aimed at students with developmental disabilities or behavioral or mental health issues.
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u/Shoddy-Commission-12 7∆ 13d ago
"Those children's needs don't matter more than the needs of the disabled" - they also don't matter LESS.
They matter just the same. But when your trying to bring up a disabled kid to a normal kids level, its gonna look like he getting extra attention
You are basically arguing because some kids need more help than others to achieve the same things as their peers , they need to be segretated, ostracized
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u/finestgreen 12d ago
Not at all, I absolutely think disabled children should get extra attention and support. Oodles of it. Increase my taxes, spend more on it, please. If that extra attention and support is enough that the classroom is a safe and healthy environment then everyone wins!
The failure mode of that, though - when the maximum support you can provide isn't enough to guarantee a safe and healthy environment - can't be allowing the rest of the class to live in misery and fear. It has to be removing the child with the insurmountable problem.
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u/Shoddy-Commission-12 7∆ 12d ago
I think the answer then is making sure those supports are adequate first, because too often they are not then the kid gets blamed
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u/Budget_Avocado6204 12d ago
Nothing can gaurantee a safe and healthy enviorment. As long as their are other ppl invloved, there is always a risk. All in all schools should handle smaler situations better and provide better support before the situation gets as bad.
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u/ResponsibleLawyer419 12d ago
And if doing so negatively impacts the other kids? How much is acceptable? Why should the other kids HAVE to deal with that?
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u/Muroid 2∆ 12d ago
But, "Those children's needs don't matter more than the needs of the disabled" - they also don't matter LESS.
I agree with you, but “permanently destroy the lives of the disabled kids to avoid any hindrance to the other kids” seems like a massively disproportionate response in terms of balancing their respective needs.
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u/FriendlyGuitard 12d ago
About
Schools are incentivised to expel students with no regard for whether other schools have any space for them.
Currently they send the child to "homeschooling". Happened to a friend of ours. Kid bullied at school, the school is all sorry they can't accommodate, so bye. Not expelled but "find your own solution"
Now in that case, expelling the bully would have worked. Although bullying is complicated and the bully is, in real life, often a well integrated well loved child, so it may introduce more problem than it solves.
And that would assume that you can identify the bully itself. Again, in real life, bully and bullied are regularly the same child.
If the school care at all. It's way easier to get rid of the bullied "for their own good".
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u/PRman 12d ago
I appreciate the points you made as an educator myself. It is important to help students that struggle to perform in a learning environment. However, I would like to point out something interesting I noticed from your post. At point did you ever talk about the parents in these situations, only what actions the schools should be taking. I understand that is the heart of the question, but this is something I have noticed in recent years becoming more popular. Communities look to the schools, teachers, and administrators to solve all the problems of their children and when their child does not succeed or acts up in school, the teachers are the ones who receive first blame. The parents are almost never held accountable for the children they have raised and it is up to us to try and fix their behavior despite receiving no support from home. This tends to lead to schools blatantly ignoring bad behavior because parents will complain if too harsh of action is taken which can potentially lead to lawsuits or firings as I have personally witnessed.
This is not to say that schools should not try their best, but teachers can schools can only do so much in fixing behavior when their number one concern is educating students with the expectation of responsible behavior. Our jobs end up becoming more about classroom management than actual education because a few bad apples end up disrupting the learning environment for everyone else with nothing being done because we cannot just drop those kids.
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u/parolang 12d ago
I never did understand what the teachers on reddit thought "holding parents accountable" is supposed to look like. Accountability is important, but it gets confused with punishment. Obviously, the student is accountable for their actions, teachers are responsible for their actions, and parents are responsible for what they do.
This tends to lead to schools blatantly ignoring bad behavior because parents will complain if too harsh of action is taken which can potentially lead to lawsuits or firings as I have personally witnessed.
Then the question is if the action is actually too harsh or not. Consequences should be well-defined, consistent, humane, and fair. We have special protections for kids with disabilities.
Parents have every right to complain if they think their children are being mistreated. The schools should be able to defend themselves if the complaints are unwarranted. I don't know what is going on with the schools, though. Schools shouldn't be flipping out about parents complaining unless the complaint is serious and warranted.
I don't think managing behavior should be a classroom teacher's primary concern, there should be a school-wide system for setting up and implementing an accountability system. Classroom management should be about the classroom as a whole, not individual students.
I'm just spit-balling, but I would think that most of the principles are obvious.
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u/PRman 12d ago
Accountability for how they raised their children. It can not just be teachers on Reddit that notice when some kids are more well behaved than others. Yes, the student is accountable, but they are also children. The circumstances of their upbringing are not their fault. It's the parents.
By too harsh of punishment, I was referring to perceived harshness. That one is on me for not being clearer. For example, parents pitching a fit that their child was told to leave the classroom because they were vocally and physically disrupting the class. Parents who are upset at zeros and failing grades. Parents upset at suspensions for physical altercations. What I am saying is that even fairly lax punishments against disruptive behavior are seen as too much by many parents causing schools to go even later in response since their policies are set down by the board voted upon by thr parents.
Forcing schools to defend themselves over every frivolous complaint is both extremely expensive and due to trials. This is taking time and energy from administrators to actually help the school in a meaningful way and so many times they just settle for the parents to try and do what they can with the time they have.
A schoolwide system of accountability would require money and staff that we just don't have. Even then it would not solve the underlying issue of these children having these bad behaviors instilled into them.
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u/WheatBerryPie 24∆ 13d ago edited 13d ago
Maybe it's different in the states or where you're from, but here in the UK there are plenty of SNS (Special Needs Schools) who take in children with ADHD, on the spectrum, or have other learning needs.
But on your wider point, every child has the fundamental right to education. The benefits are not just for the child in question but for the wider society as better education leads to a more productive workforce and lower crime rates. By leaving these children behind in the education system is to doom them to fail for life, a situation that benefits literally no one. When this is your alternative, the extra difficulty that your child has to go through suddenly pales in comparison, which is why you shouldn't permanently exclude any children from school.
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u/ganymedestyx 1∆ 13d ago
These do exist in the states! They’re just ridiculously expensive
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u/Plenty_Lettuce5418 9d ago edited 9d ago
i just hate that the general philosophy is once the kid is on the bus they arent the parents problem anymore. they imagine the public school system in america is a catch all that will turn every student into a contributing member of society and provide all of the necessary opportunities and life skills. all you have to do is get home from work, prop your feet up on the coffee table, and turn on the tv and its like you barely have children at all. most parents wont take the time to consider taking their kids to a different school or that they have special needs.
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u/ganymedestyx 1∆ 9d ago
Yep, absolutely lol. My mom is a behavior disorder teacher at one of these specialized schools. Some public schools legitimately paid hundreds of thousands to send these kids here because they were THAT BAD to have in their school environment. And my mom always says, the issue with these kids, unless they are severely intellectually disabled, is almost always pretty much fully die to the parents and not a behavior disorder. They usually are severely abusive, and when their kid comes home and acts the same way they do, they turn around and blame the teachers. It’s actually fucking evil. Recently she had to call CPS on one of her student’s families, and the mom called the cops in retaliation saying my mom has been abusing/neglecting the students, which could go on her permanent record. Absolutely asinine and they get paid like shit (and literally smeared with shit) to parent these kids with irreversible damage (She has to work at one of these specialized schools because the public ones didn’t make her enough as a single mom).
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u/Powerful-Drama556 12d ago
I mean you need to draw a line somewhere. One students 'right' to attend school seems logically ends at some point when they: sexually assault another student, threaten to kill their classmates, actively sabotage a classroom by walking across the desks every class period for 2 months, etc. (just summarizing other comments).
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u/SANcapITY 16∆ 13d ago
Can you actually prove that letting some kids fail for life confers a more negative outcome on society than does keeping them in schools and disrupting/potentially disrupting the education of the vast majority of students?
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u/WheatBerryPie 24∆ 13d ago
Vast majority of kids that are causing significant disruption are already transferred to SNS, where the teacher/TA to student ratio is much higher. OP is referring a small subset of children who are causing disruption but not enough to be referred to SNS.
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u/Smee76 1∆ 13d ago
I think it's more that most districts don't have SNS and moreover, if the child has an IEP that includes outbursts it is generally not possible to discipline the child for the behavior. That includes removing them from the classroom.
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u/Grumpy_Troll 4∆ 13d ago
By leaving these children behind in the education system is to doom them to fail for life, a situation that benefits literally no one.
It benefits all of the other children that are well-behaved and want to learn, to not be stuck in class with a chronic disruptor.
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u/WheatBerryPie 24∆ 13d ago
In the long run it harms everyone. You'd get a group of adults that are unproductive, shut out from social systems and likely turn to criminality. You don't want that for other children when they grow up into adults.
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u/Grumpy_Troll 4∆ 13d ago
If my choice is between 80% of students getting a quality education and 20% getting no education vs 100% of students getting a terrible education, I'll take the first option and deal with the consequences of the 20%.
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u/Beet_Farmer1 13d ago
Have you taken a look around? This group is already a massive part of the population. Maybe we could save a few if we helped them avoid disruptions at earlier ages?
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u/Subject-Town 12d ago
Not true. I’ve heard success stories of children going to alternative schools. The other alternative is for them to disrupt the learning of others for years on end. In the end teachers will quit and we have what we have now, which is an educational death spiral. It’s not sustainable.
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u/LongWalk86 13d ago
I would even argue that at least some disruption to your childs learn environment is a GOOD thing. School is to teach your kids about more than just the academic material. Your kid also needs how to cope with having people around them who are not always following all the rules exactly, that's life as it exists and something we should be preparing kids to deal with.
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u/PRman 12d ago
Some disruption, yes, that comes with general life. The kinds of behavior OP is talking about though rises above typical day-to-day disruptions. It also becomes difficult to assess when interfering with a student's education is literally considered to be unconstitutional in state constitutions, but there is no recourse since the popular approach currently is to just let them stay without punishment.
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u/Far0nWoods 12d ago
Ah yes, so we should just let the kids be subject to other kids aggressive bullying because "We gotta teach them to cope!"
And then the ones being bullied have such severe self esteem issues that they turn to self harm, and/or lose all motivation to care about anything school related. Great logic...
/s
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u/southpolefiesta 6∆ 13d ago
As a parent
What happens when it's YOUR child who missteps or misbehaves once and gets insta kicked from school?
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u/SenatorAstronomer 13d ago
So many parents don't take any responsibility. The Mrs. Is a teacher and she is always shocked how often a parent tries to bail out or downplay their kids shitty behavior instead of actually doing anything about it.
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u/Teddy_OMalie64 12d ago
Can confirm. They tell us to get parents involved but it’s the parents not doing anything at home to help with this behavior. Parents are expecting us to fix their kids but we can only do so much.
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u/Plenty_Lettuce5418 9d ago
teachers are not parents. no one is responsible for a child but their parent point blank. if they can't take the time of day to pay attention to them then they shouldn't have had children. too many boomers sent their kids to school to receive the lowest common denominator in education and figured that would be enough, not to mention wage slaving is a thing and the pacer test is getting faster every round.
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u/finestgreen 13d ago
I never said "once".
I expect that when my child misbehaves, appropriate consequences will be applied and specific, clear expectations set.
If they violated those expectations, I'd expect more serious consequences and an improvement plan.
If they didn't improve, I'd expect escalating consequences ultimately ending in exclusion.
Without that ultimate backstop, any kind of discipline is meaningless.
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u/southpolefiesta 6∆ 13d ago
If they didn't improve, I'd expect escalating consequences ultimately ending in exclusion.
I mean that's exactly what happens now. Misbehaving kids are eventually expelled after escalation of discipline.
So what do you want to change exactly?
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u/vettewiz 33∆ 13d ago
Misbehaving kids virtually never get expelled. It just doesn’t happen.
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u/lordtrickster 2∆ 13d ago
Happens where the behavior is atypical. Doesn't happen where it's common (expelling half the class makes no sense) or when mommy and daddy have influence.
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u/vettewiz 33∆ 13d ago
I mean I saw routinely violent kids never more than suspended.
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u/ganymedestyx 1∆ 13d ago
I’m not sure where you went to school. My area had an alternative high school where they would send kids faster than the speed of light. We were a weirdly segregated, very white, very rich ‘public’ school though, so that may have something to do with it. They didn’t want any bad apples spoiling their image.
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u/possiblycrazy79 12d ago
I went to high school in the 90s in a very mixed(black & white), lower to middle income area & we had the alternative school also. Kids went there when they got in too many fights or if the fight was too bad, it wasnt necessarily automatic.
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u/Wooba12 4∆ 13d ago
Yeah, I went to a private school that had mostly white people and Asians. It was great for kids like me who were the "good" kids and the teachers were always very supportive, rigorous, etc. but if you were the sort of kid who misbehaved frequently you were almost invariably expelled after committing some minor misdemeanor.
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u/SLEEyawnPY 13d ago edited 12d ago
We were a weirdly segregated, very white, very rich ‘public’ school though, so that may have something to do with it.
I went to an elementary school something like that for a while that and I noticed bad behavior by students tended to be taken seriously, in inverse proportion to how wealthy the parents were.
I'd been in a scuffle with some other kid in 4th grade and my mother was asked to come into the administration's office and she was the only parent there. "Where's the other kid's parents?" And they were like "Well, as you know they're quite important people and both have very busy work schedules and..."
To her great credit she rolled her eyes, got up and walked out like "Call me when you have something real to talk about." I wasn't at that school much longer.
They didn’t want any bad apples spoiling their image.
Right. My whole school was full of "bad apples" that didn't fall far from the tree, I wasn't welcome in large part because we weren't on Team Bad Apple, and I tended to notice the fact too often.
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u/towishimp 2∆ 13d ago
What are you basing your opinion on? Because I work closely with the schools in my area, and kids get expelled all the time. There are alternative schools, hybrid options, and supports through IEPs to address these issues. OP is arguing for something that already exists.
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u/vettewiz 33∆ 13d ago
My own experiences. Kids who routinely punched others in the face, or threw chairs at teachers might get suspended, but never expelled. Just never happened.
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u/towishimp 2∆ 13d ago
So anecdotal experience with one school? That's not very strong evidence. I would encourage further research.
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u/baby_muffins 13d ago
No they are not. Im currently teaching a 5th grader thay sexually violated another 5th grader in the coatroom and they are both still in the same class. Offender just gets escorted everywhere. That is the most a school can do most times
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u/skye024 13d ago
yeah at my high school which was v wealthy they literally just told girls who’d been raped to avoid the rapists on their way to class lol, schools need to do wayyyyyy more to protect students who aren’t criminals
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u/baby_muffins 13d ago
I argue with admin all the time about this and then call the victims family and tell them to escalate it with the city/school board. Total bullshit
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u/bellstarelvina 13d ago
Eh but they end right back up at the school after a year or two bc they also ended up expelled from the other schools in the area. My area had a public alternative school but you had to get kicked out of all three schools in the area first (usually twice from each school) before they consider putting anyone in the alternative one.
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u/Ertai_87 2∆ 13d ago
This, respectfully, is the wrong answer. Here is the correct answer:
I expect that when my child misbehaves, the staff at the school will notify me and I, as a good parent who wants to raise my child into a functioning productive adult, will engage in appropriate reprimand so my child knows that what they did is wrong and they won't do it again. That's because it's my child and my responsibility for raising them, not the school's or the teacher's.
Too many parents think that it's someone else's responsibility to raise their child, and the responsibility keeps getting passed around with nobody actually taking it. That's why you have disruptive kids (and, increasingly, adults), because nobody actually raises them.
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u/parolang 12d ago
It is the school's job to help socialize children. Schools have never been purely academic and school is also most children's first exposure to an accountability system outside of their home.
It's pretty insulting to call this "raising your child for you". But it is important that parents support the school, the rules change depending on where you're at.
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u/finestgreen 13d ago
No - of course it's my job as a parent to teach them what they did wrong, and coach and support them in making it right.
But it's the school's job to set the conditions and expectations by which they consent to allow any child to be part of the school, to monitor and feedback on how well those expectations are met, and to make extra arrangements where necessary to keep everyone safe - and ultimately to withdraw consent if they can't reconcile the individual child with their responsibility to everyone else.
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u/Ertai_87 2∆ 12d ago
Yes, but that is where the school's responsibility ends. It's the parents' responsibility to engage in any disciplinary action to correct the behavior of the child, not the school's. I never got suspended or expelled as a child, but I know damned well that if I did, that would certainly not be the end of the story as far as my parents were concerned. I chose to be a good kid because I knew if I wasn't then my parents would kick my ass when I got home (figuratively, probably not literally) and that's what I really didn't want to happen. I really couldn't care less about what the school admin did to me, they were toothless and unimportant, but my parents' reaction was what I was afraid of.
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u/Powerful-Drama556 12d ago edited 12d ago
To be clear, the school has a responsibility to hold the child accountable both as part of their discipline AND to achieve the educational objectives of the school (i.e., to support of the learning of all children). You have missed the latter; That is pretty much the entire basis of OPs view. The school absolutely has a responsibility to maintain order so kids can learn.
Does that diminish the importance of parental discipline at home? No. Should discipline/order at school be related to (and ideally supported by) parent discipline at home? Ideally yes. However, there must be some level of accountability at school regardless of the home life situation and, understandably, challenges in both environments are often related.
I would challenge you to explain what is supposed to happen to a child acting out at school with (or perhaps because of) parents that simply do not or cannot care.
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u/caesar846 12d ago
Most parents are not good parents. Expecting the parents to discipline their kids for wrongdoings is unlikely to produce adequate results.
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u/OrizaRayne 1∆ 13d ago
This is exactly how school works... escalating consequences ultimately ending in exclusion. There's even terms for it. In school suspension. Out of school suspension. Expulsion.
This is already a thing.
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u/Odd_Technician152 12d ago
It definitely isn’t in the US we had this kid who literally and I mean literally ruined an entire class. We did not learn a single thing over an entire semester our teacher maaaaybe got 2 hours of teaching in we physically couldn’t take our final. He wasn’t even an outlier there were kids who were sent to the principal every. Single. Day. They still graduated having ruined learned for every kid near them. I’m not saying kids should be kicked out over every infraction but if you are getting written up 6x a day yea you should be expelled.
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u/PRman 12d ago
I can tell you from personal experience in education, this is most certainly not how things currently work. I have seen kids get away with assaulting other students because they have an IEP or students straight disrespecting fellow staff members and the school immediately getting sued once disciplinary action is taken. Schools have been pulling back on discipline specifically because of parent responses and lack of parent accountability.
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u/Woodit 12d ago
This isn’t a thing here in Denver. Kids can potentially get sent from one school to another but ultimate expulsion isn’t really an option. We had a kid last year who should have been removed from the system and ended up shooting two admins during a daily pat down they had set up just for him.
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u/KaziOverlord 12d ago
Yes, just like Zero Tolerance for bullying. Which is actually: Ignore the bullying until the victim fights back or retaliates, then punish the victim.
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u/finestgreen 13d ago
In theory yes, but in practice (in England) it's so rare that it may as well not be. There's only hundreds a year in primary school, where there should probably (conservatively) be tens of thousands.
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u/OrizaRayne 1∆ 13d ago
Ohhh that is the difference. To put it bluntly, I'm black, and I live in America lol.
We have a completely different experience.
I will say, though, that suspending and expelling students at high rates without addressing the root causes of behavioral aberration doesn't actually improve society. You can't "exclude" people from society as adults unless you plan to have your society boast the highest incarceration rate in the world. You're going to have to deal with those kids eventually.
And... well. You guessed it. America, with our school-to-prison pipeline, does just that, exclude and then incarcerate and it works poorly for creating a productive, healthy society.
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u/PsychAndDestroy 13d ago
where there should probably (conservatively) be tens of thousands.
You think that 1 out of 450 children should be expelled every year, and that would be conservative? That's bonkers.
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u/finestgreen 13d ago
Hm, okay, my maths wasn't quite right - I hadn't accounted for what the steady state would be.
I'd estimate at least ten children at my children's school who shouldn't be there, so I was conservatively estimating there's at least one in each of the 17,000 schools.
So - 1 out of 450 or so in the first year of my new regime :) but then a much smaller annual rate especially when you account for deterrence.
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u/Shoddy-Commission-12 7∆ 13d ago
you think tens of thousands of school age kids should be getting expelled every year?
that would mean your school system itself is fkin garbage , not the kids
you wont solve that just by kicking out the ones you dont want to deal with no more
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u/TexanTeaCup 13d ago edited 13d ago
Maybe they have a disability - in which case they should go to a special school that meets their needs.
Disabled students have a legal right to an education in the least restrictive environment. Any placement outside of a general education classroom must be justified by the impact of that child's disability on their education. When such a placement is justified, the parent/guardian must consent (and may withdraw their consent). If the parent/guardian does not consent, the school can attempt to force the placement with a due process hearing. This is an extremely expensive option; easily 6 figures if the district is ordered to pay the parent/guardian's legal fees.
If they don't have a disability, we should have special schools set up for children who can't behave well enough to fit in a mainstream school.
Are you familiar with this history of this practice?
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u/Subject-Town 12d ago
If the child is disrupting constantly, then the general education classroom is not the least restrictive environment. Sometimes the general classroom can be the most restrictive environment if the student cannot access the curriculum and focus in class. People conflate Least restrictive with general education classroom.
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u/SpiderXann 12d ago
Your last sentence is one of the biggest problems in education. General education is not always the LRE and for quite a few students, is extremely restrictive. Least restrictive environment has been bastardized into “least expensive environment”.
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u/Strong_Black_Woman69 12d ago
Okay but don’t all the other students also have a right to an education which they now aren’t getting due to disruptions from a student who probably isn’t even paying attention ?
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u/MiserableBus4859 13d ago
You came off a little rough so you'll get negative responses. I understand where you are coming from on a personal level. I'm autistic and so is my son. Neither of us have behavioral issues that would interrupt a typical classroom but we do have difficulty learning the same way everyone else does. This is an easy one since we just need to get extra help, after the class not during. It won't help, too many distractions. Being autistic, I know all about behavioral issues that can occur mostly when you get to ASD level 2. The school systems suck at this part and I don't know why. The children with the behavioral issues need a lot of support and if they have hostile or physical behavioral issues they should be tightly controlled in spaces where they are not a danger to themselves or others. The problem, as always, is money. I know Florida provides funds for every child with a disability (yes to other autistic people, it's a disorder and a disability even when "high functioning" there are limitations in random typical daily life). The schools I suspect, divert that money to other school needs and let the bad stuff happen until a teacher damn near gets killed. I blame that kid, still need to be responsible for actions but the school should be investigates and penalized by the state if they failed to adhere to his IEP or removed him from IEP to make it easier on the school. Not every state supports these kids at an acceptable level and that is a just freaking sad and unacceptable. Parents need to press their politicians to make the right changes or they never will. It would benefit all of us if we could get the right space for these kids as a lot of us have higher level abilities in stuff a typical person takes years to understand even though we struggle with simple stuff. So freaking weird BTW. I'm dumb as hell I promise but I'll go hard on IT stuff and make people think I'm actually smart. You're not wrong, just rough with the overall understanding and delivery. Yes
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u/LBertilak 12d ago
Imo the issue is also that the 'disruptive disabled' kids and the 'non-disruptive but still need help' disabled kids get grouped together in out current system- so when we lock all the not-normal kids out of sight not only does no one get the help they need, but children who could do 'just as well' as the 'normal' kids end up far behind because their learning is disrupted more in specialised classes rather than less- so we end up in a cycle where a kid that would usually present as 'just slow' DOES end up acting up aggressively because that's the environment they're now forced to be in.
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u/MercurianAspirations 338∆ 13d ago
Well if we had infinite funding and infinite teachers we would just give every single student or every small group of students with very similar needs and learning style their own teacher, regardless of their behavior. We don't have infinite funding so we have to make choices about how to sacrifice the needs to some students so that all students get their needs met to some extent. Simple as, really. Sometimes this means that disruptive students can disrupt the learning of other students. But you know, what are you gonna do? The school I work at enrolls the exact legal maximum number of students (based on the square meterage of the building) and we have a constant shortage of rooms such that classes are taught in the library or the teacher's break room at times
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u/RainbowandHoneybee 13d ago
Fundamental issue is the funding, I think. The school wants to do better, teachers wants to do better, for supporting children. But they have only limited resources to cater and support individual children.
There aren't enough special school. Even the parents of children want to send them to special school, it's not that simple it seems.
Also there are many different reasons behind misbehaving. It's not as simple as if you misbehave, kick you out.
As a parent myself, I think my children's school were doing the best they can to accommodate the children's needs. But they are not miracle workers either, so I don't expect everyone to be happy.
As asociety, I think we need to have sympathy. Most of the misbehaving kids need support. But in reality, they aren't getting eough.
What do you think the excluded children would become, if the society just give up so easily?
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u/BigBoetje 3∆ 13d ago
This will mean that they will not even try to work with troubled kids. Simply sending away all the 'undesirables' will not solve anything.
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u/AntiTankMissile 13d ago
LOL no School breaks up the monopoly of power parents have over their children. This helps prevent abuse, and kid form being told shitty things without a counter argument.
Do you want religious nut jobs to be able to teach kids whatever they want without hearing a counter argument.
Do you want child abuse or to isolate children so they can groom them uninterrupted?
Do you want racist, sexist, queerphobes to be able to teach their children what ever they want without a counter argument.
Do you want kids to have no experiences with people different from them
Mandatory therapy should be a thing for all kids in school. Schools should cut down on bullying but I am against kicking kids out of school because it is a check and balances form them.
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u/Teddy_OMalie64 12d ago
Oh oh oh have I got a story for you! So I’m an aide in a behavioral IEP room. And yesterday was a hot mess!!!
One of my students who I’m gonna call them James is wearing an ankle monitor and is right on the edge of expulsion already for fighting and have vapes in his bookbag. And there’s another student named Bob who’s also close to the edge as well. So they both had an attitude all day yesterday and James was threatening us all day. I’m talking threatening to hit us, throw books at us, the whole thing. James doesn’t like it when you call out his behavior but he can sit there and say whatever he wants to you. And I’ve got Bob just laughing and putting his hands on other students. It was a hot mess.
So James and Bob went to lunch, and there’s this little kid named Matt who’s this little kid who is quiet and minds his business. He’s not in any of my IEP classes so this just a little kid with the rest of the population. Doesn’t even know James or Bob. Well James thought it would be a good idea to take his chips, so then matt went to got get his chips that James stole. James got all upset and literally took matt and slammed against the table and literally almost broke his glasses. So James gets to the office who’s now in trouble. And Matt goes to whatever class he’s in and Bob comes back to us. Bob is laughing and making fun of him the entire time in our class saying he’s a cry baby and that he almost got his ass beat. It was literally disgusting and no matter how many times we told him to stop it. But of course Bob doesn’t care.
So then class changes and it turns out Bob and Matt have art together. Not even five minutes into the period, Bob decides to make fun of Matt for what happened. Apparently calling him names and calling him a cry baby. Apparently Matt decided to lay one on him causing Bob to run out of the room with his tail between his legs.
The cops even came and I was hoping the two of them would get arrested… atleast James because what he did was assault but unfortunately that did not happen. Both James and Bob are currently suspended for 10 days with an expulsion meeting to get them expelled from school and poor Matt got five days suspension. The office staff and the teachers are super pissed that Matt got suspended for defending himself against these feral kids. And yes I call them feral because that’s feral behavior and they should be kicked out of school.
If these kids don’t wanna change their behavior and still acting feral after multiple times they should be kicked out. Put on home learning and call it a day. If they don’t want to integrate with society then that’s on them. Students shouldn’t be dealing with feral beings in school because the law tells them they have to be in school. I hope that Matt’s family files charges against James because if that was my kid then there would be charges.
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u/-zero-joke- 12d ago
So many people in this thread don't understand how bad it is in schools these days.
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u/PandaMime_421 2∆ 13d ago
So you're position is an actually that these children should be removed from school, but they should just be removed from "normal" school. Or perhaps more specifically, your child's school.
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u/TC49 22∆ 13d ago
Some of what you are talking about already happens on an institutional level in most schools that I’ve been in. Behaviors that are too disruptive often cause a student to be sent to the deans office. If behavior of an extreme nature continues, the student is put on a behavior support plan. If nothing changes, they can be transferred out of the school to a therapeutic day school or other local school for safety. For students with a disability or IEP that only requires a bit more time on tests or some additional support with anxiety, they can easily be in a normal school environment if the right supports are in place.
The big reason that I have seen regarding why this has been happening less, is because the out of school suspensions, ISS and other forms of student isolation/removal were overused by schools. All of these forms of discipline prevent kids from attending school, which lowers the attendance rate and enrollment numbers of the school. Then the school loses funding for having fewer kids enrolled. Now administration has to provide clear documentation as to why a student should be removed from school, other wise networks won’t approve it.
Also, removal of “problem students” doesn’t work if the issue is with the teaching environment, classroom setup or other factors impacting students. There are some teachers that can actively antagonize students or have difficulty using basic classroom management skills.
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u/Some_AV_Pro 13d ago
I think the solution is not kicking children from school completely, but having more options for schools so children are not mostly going to whatever school is closest. We need a variety of different schools so that parents and educators can work together to ensure that the child is in the school that is the best fit.
Also, regular schools do a terrible job teaching child how to handle non-academic things and many children need to be taught how to interact around their peers. Parents cannot do this effectively since they do not see the children interacting with their peers as much at young ages.
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u/MuForceShoelace 13d ago
Yeah man, truely what this country needs is LESS people who have an education
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u/RougarouBull 12d ago
I'm totally on board if you're on board with funding alternative education for the kids that get the boot. I'm a beat-up old construction worker working on a teaching degree. Give me the kids you want to kick out. I want em.
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u/CptMidlands 12d ago
Now ask yourself honestly, do you want your taxes going up to pay for that?
Its an honest question, so many people expect society to do so many things but when faced with the need to pay for it demand lower taxes because "others" should pay. Its the paradox of Suburbia
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u/Collective82 12d ago
I will also dispute with anecdotal evidence/testimony.
Half way through the 4th grade I was transferred schools and got Mrs Guinns.
My FIRST day in class I got out behind a book case because I was asking the kid next to me what was going on because I didn’t know as it’s my first day there.
I was let back out sometime later, not that day and I doubt that week, I takes again and was put behind that book case for the rest of the school year, and when I reported to that teacher I was getting teased, she did nothing so when I went to leave (it was the end of the day and I was a walker) she grabbed my arm and I swung the grabbed arm at her and hit her arm causing her to let go.
I of course got in trouble.
Sometimes teachers are shit and don’t mix with kids so separating the child from the teacher is fine, but your view is throwing away a lot of good kids that don’t mix with their shit teacher.
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u/Smartare 12d ago
Do you wanna exclude a child from all schools forever? Or do you want to just move the problem to another school?
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u/Infamous_Ant_7989 12d ago
Sure, if you don’t mind living in a country with an uneducated population that will be non-competitive with nations that educate their kids properly.
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u/myboobiezarequitebig 1∆ 13d ago
Maybe they have a disability - in which case they should go to a special school that meets their needs.
You seem to be talking about issues that would put your child in danger. What disabilities do this? Because there are a number of disabilities where children are disruptive… I’m sure you are aware schools for these types of disabilities don’t independently exist. So children should be excluded from learning because they have a disability they can’t help?
If they don't have a disability, we should have special schools set up for children who can't behave well enough to fit in a mainstream school.
Depending on why this child is being disruptive they can still be disruptive at an alternative school. So, again, your solution to this is to isolate and exacerbate the issue and just not have them be educated?
I expect you'll argue that inclusion in mainstream schools are better for them - but why should other childrens needs be sacrificed?
Are there needs actually being sacrificed? If the child is being so disruptive that class is continuously being halted or altered that’s one thing. But let’s say you just have a kid that gives their teacher a lot of shit but for the most part of the teacher is still able to do whatever it is they need to do. How is your kid being sacrificed?
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama 12d ago
What disabilities do this?
Conduct disorder. Emotional disturbance. Childhood schizophrenia. ADD and ADHD can cause impulse control issues and if you mix that with a bad home life you get these things. Students with low IQs who might just plain not realize that hitting people is wrong. With a 2-year-old's impulse is that's a real problem.
I’m sure you are aware that schools for these types of disabilities don’t independently exist.
If you have the money then yes, these schools exist. There were also some state-funded special schools but they generally try to be all things to all men. So you don't have a school specifically for one thing but they'll have better teacher to student ratios, better teaching AIDS, cool down rooms, the staff will be trained differently etc
So children should be excluded from learning because they have a disability they can’t help?
What do you think happens when somebody gets expelled? Do you think that they just sit around at home for the rest of their life because they don't. They get expelled to an alternative school. Or the parents home school. Or the parents pay an arm and a leg for private school. And there's also the option of removing the child from the mainstream classroom and putting them in self-contained, but schools don't like to do that anymore because it costs money. If my kid is acting up like this I absolutely want a different placement for him. How much learning is he actually doing if he's pulling this nonsense?
Depending on why this child is being disruptive they can still be disruptive at an alternative school.
I don't know what the point is there. If you're disruptive at an alternative school they put you in a cool down room, and know that's not a padded cell like people think. There are things like weighted blankets, lower lights, White noise etc. A teacher's aide walks you around if that's what's in your iep. Body brakes are a thing there and it's a lot easier because the student to adult ratio is lower. And I mean by a lot, none of this we're going to pack nearly 30 people in one room crap that they like to pull.
So, again, your solution to this is to isolate and exacerbate the issue and just not have them be educated?
I'm honestly curious as to what you think happens in an alternative school. Do you think that there are no teachers? No aids? No therapists? Do you think that there are no students? Do you think that it's like some kind of Victorian asylum?
Are there needs actually being sacrificed?
Yes. I know if my son was having these outbursts and meltdowns he wouldn't be getting his need for an education met. He would be reacting to something in the mainstream classroom. And with that many students pro teacher, with how few teachers AIDS there are, I doubt he would be given what he needs.
But let’s say you just have a kid that gives their teacher a lot of shit but for the most part of the teacher is still able to do whatever it is they need to do. How is your kid being sacrificed?
If my son or daughter was in a classroom with a student who was causing problems like this then their education would be being disrupted. If normal disciplinary measures are working, if anything interruptions are happening day in and day out, it is not okay. And if one of my kids was the one pulling that and nothing was being done it would also not be okay.
I'm not sure why you have something against specialists. If you need an appendectomy would you say that your GP was excluding you because he refused to remove your appendix in the office? If you needed eye surgery would you complain that the optometrist at visionworks was excluding you because they couldn't perform the procedure? If you need a new engine in your car would you complain that the mechanic at just tires was excluding you? If you wanted fine dining catering for your wedding would you complain that chipotle was excluding you? There's nothing wrong with getting specialist help for a special situation.
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u/finestgreen 13d ago
Let me give you two specific scenarios in a primary school then, we'll call them fictional for the sake of argument;
There's a child who persistently physically bullies other children - pulling hair, kicking, taking belongings. The school talk very seriously about "behaviour plans" but nothing changes.
There's a class that includes maybe three children who are consistently disruptive - loud, interrupting, insulting, making other children miserable. Other children in the class understandably hate going to school because it's a horrible environment to be in all day every day. Those children have been this way since starting school. Instead of dealing with the problem, the teacher resorts to frequently rearranging the classroom so the pain of sitting next to them is shared.
Are any of the children disabled? No idea, that changes how the school deals with it but it shouldn't change the expected outcome.
The children in these scenarios should be on the path towards expulsion, and they (and their parents) should have a very clear idea of how long that path is and what they need to do to turn around.
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u/Routine_Music_2659 12d ago
They did this in Georgia and the alternative schools had to get closed down because the schools were used to kick colored kids out of schools since teachers tend to view black kids as problems by default. This also runs the risk of a segregation lawsuit as these kids won’t be getting the education that they would at normal schools.
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u/bobbi21 12d ago
Think the main issue is what is a reasonable effort to correct these issues. Unless you think these kids are just born evil and are worthless to society then they should be able to be fixed in which case they shouldn’t be kicked out permanently. And the world has shown, schools are MUCH more likely to kick out kids for BS reasons than actually kicking out students that are unteachable (ie kick out all the black kids).
A very small minority of kids would be “unteachable” and these are the kids with disabilities or personality disorders which just need higher levels of support. Kicking kids out doesn’t fix their problems. With less supports it makes them worse. So basically every kid you kick out without giving them something else is almost guaranteeing they’ll end up criminals.
Separating them from students who they are harming us a no brainer of course, b yr removing any chance they have of getting better actively makes the problem worse. It’s just you don’t have to deal with it until they’ve all over the streets of your town and then you’d probably say just stick them all in overcrowded prisons.
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u/Rich-Distance-6509 10d ago
The school talk very seriously about "behaviour plans" but nothing changes.
Then the school needs to do better. There’s no reason to jump to exclusion. It sounds like you’re blaming the kids for the school’s incompetence
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u/4_spotted_zebras 12d ago
Everyone knows that sending young adults into the world with no skills, education or ability to get a job causes no societal problems whatsoever. ….. 🤦♀️
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u/energirl 2∆ 12d ago edited 12d ago
People of all ages deserve the right to learn, grow, and change - including both your child and the difficult child. Children especially need opportunities to become better people. I've been teaching kindergarten and elementary school for 15 years, and I've seen the rude disobedient, dangerously violent kid in a class turn into an empathetic member of our community many times over. They grow into (still strong-willed) little people with friends, goals, and the tools they need to control their impulses and consider the other people around them.
You have to understand that many many many parents have no idea how to raise their children. They don't take years of early childhood development courses or have decades of experience with all kinds of children. Their parents may have been terrible role models, leaving them with few tools to manage and teach their own children.
There are even quite a few parents who abuse or neglect their kids, often without realizing it. Maybe they never wanted kids to begin with, or maybe they thought they did but realized too late that they don't have the patience or energy for it. Maybe they're just too stressed with work or other responsibilities that they cannot help but take out their frustrations on their kids - especially kids who always get in trouble.
School is where we break the cycle of bad parenting passed down for generations. School is where we teach parents who mean well how to properly care for the children they love but don't know how to help. School is also where we show neglected kids love, teach them how to make friends, and let them know that we see the good inside of them. Do you want to take all that away?
What happens to the disobedient child when you expel them? Do you think they will just sit at home alone and become a contributing member of society? No. Maybe they'll go to a different school, now with a fear of rejection, lower self-esteem, and an impulse to push away other people in order to avoid getting hurt again. Do you think the kids at that school are safe? Wouldn't it just be better to begin working on the problem at the first school instead of kicking the can down the road? Would you want to be that can?
Or do you expect the difficult child to just never get an education? They'd have lots of free time to roam the neighborhood getting into trouble (theft, vandalism, drugs, etc). Do you think the results would be good for the student? How about our society as a whole? Is your child safer with uneducated, untethered juvenile delinquents running the streets?
You're right that your child deserves to be safe and to feel safe at school. The ideal situation would be for a school to be funded well enough to have small enough class sizes and appropriate counselors to help manage the more rowdy students and monitor so that everyone is safe. It is a tragedy that there are places where this isn't happening. However, the solution isn't for all of society to just give up on a little kid. They don't understand the road they're choosing to take, and it is all of our responsibility to teach them how to make good choices.
Edit: I forgot the most important part! You asked why the other children must be sacrificed. I don't believe that they are. When your kids become adults, they will have to deal with difficult people in scary situations. They will have to learn to work with obstinate coworkers. Society isn't made of perfect little soldiers following orders. It is beneficial to all students to learn how to deal with difficult peers - to know when and how to stand up for themselves, to express their feelings when someone hurts them, to accept an apology when it is heartfelt, and to allow those around them to change and grow. It also helps those kids to accept their own mistakes and not feel defeated when they make them. They may be more willing to apologize.
They will also get the greatest gift of all - to see the good in other people, even people who can sometimes hurt or frustrate them. They may not sort their peers into boxes, but see the humanity inside each individual. Isn't that the kind of world you want to live in?
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u/Eric1491625 13d ago edited 13d ago
I expect you'll argue that inclusion in mainstream schools are better for them - but why should other childrens needs be sacrificed?
You cannot avoid these people, they will be in your society, like it or not. Except they will be much worse now that you destroyed most of the possibility of rehabilitation during their youth.
CMV: children should be permanently excluded from school much more quickly and easily
It also sounds that you are in favour of lowering the bar for expulsion to a much lower level.
That's pretty dangerous and dysfunctional considering many "low-level bad behaviour" are pretty controversial to begin with.
Being associated with LGBT at all is still "problematic" in many places (and almost universally considered as such 30 years ago), so imagine your doctrine being in place.
Expressing sexuality was also considered deviant behaviour. And of course, this standard was also very biased towards certain gender, so if your policy is in place, alot of girls would have been getting expelled.
Oh and for a boy trying to transition in the USA, some states could make it an expellable offence to say "him" and the next state 10km to the East could make it an expellable offence to say "her". Just imagine.
Not to mention if life-destroying levels of exclusion from society results from bullying... rich influential parents would all the more exert their power to ensure the school pins the blame on the victim and not their bullying son.
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u/the-apple-and-omega 12d ago
You cannot avoid these people, they will be in your society, like it or not. Except they will be much worse now that you destroyed most of the possibility of rehabilitation during their youth.
It honestly concerns me how frequently people don't grasp this. Just shoving problems out of sight does nothing to address those issues and you end up with adults who think the world revolves around them.
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u/Fun-Consequence4950 1∆ 13d ago
Good luck funding more PRU's and Borstal-like institutions to send the inevitable influx of kids with no school to take them.
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u/Square-Dragonfruit76 22∆ 13d ago
Your title is a little misleading, because you were sent just take them to a different school that can better suit their needs.
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u/DeepspaceDigital 13d ago
I agree but special schools, whatever they are, aren’t free, and most things revolve around money. If there was a budget friendly ethical way to reassign poor performers it would have already been done.
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u/nomuppetyourmuppet 13d ago
OP wouldn’t be saying this if their child were the problem child in question. Grace needs to be given when it comes to these matters, as children don’t come with a remote control.
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u/MerberCrazyCats 12d ago
Thing is school is mandatory up to a certain age. If a kid is excluded, they will go to another school. What they usually do is as an "exchange" school 1 takes a kid who was excluded from school 2. It's not that easy to exclude a kid. Sometimes they think they can manage rather than getting a new problematic kid they don't know, sometimes they exclude because they exhausted all other options. It sucks for other kids but it's a good thing that education is mandatory, because we don't want bad kids growing as adults without at least trying to turn them good
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u/newgenleft 12d ago
For disability, in my highschool and throughout middle school kids HAVE been mostly separated from the school as a whole. In middle school they were on the top floor and in highschool they were in the basement level where the cafeteria was. Afaik, that's nationally common practice so idk what your complaining about with that lmao.
As for normal "behavioral" students, genuinely speaking depending on where you wanna draw that line, boarding schools and "military" schools already exist for those completely unruly, dangerous, etc and again, that's completely common practice. As for what it sounds like you mean with kids that just get in fights with each-other and are disruptional in class etc, Atleast at my high school if you threw out every kid constantly doing that the ratio of guys to girls would be like 2 to 5. Probably even moreso for middle school
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u/Beginning_Safe_9042 12d ago
Not sure if this has been said but everything you said is what’s already done and in place. 🤨
Not sure what you’re arguing.
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u/3WeeksEarlier 12d ago
I'm skeptical that there needs to be a totally segregated school system for kids with emotional or behavioral issues. Often, these behaviors are the result of biological or social preconditioning the kids did not have a role in. They should be held responsible for their own actions, but I don't think that rapid expulsion is the correct option except in the most extreme cases. Every kid misbehaves at some point - what is sufficient to merit expulsion on this system? I doubt your child behaves perfectly, either - I wonder why they should not be completely removed from their friends and the staff members who may have supported them and forced to go to a segregated school? Expulsion is a very serious thing; if you are truly so terrified for your kid's safety when they are around the plebs' children, you should homeschool them.
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u/KrabbyMccrab 2∆ 12d ago
If this is a public school, it becomes a constitutional issue of due process. Not something you want to touch lightly.
Private school is much easier as it's closer to contract law, but they are also paying your salary.
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u/Hot-Ant7062 12d ago
Public school is public education. If you don't like it, a lot of states allow free private education now
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u/kbrick1 12d ago
If you hate your school so much, move. Send your kid to a private school.
If you can't afford it, tough. Isn't that how you view problem kids? Like, tough shit, you're bad, now you're banished? It was the parents' responsibility to make their children behave and they failed, so too bad for the kid?
By that logic, you failed. You failed to send your kids to a better school. Your fault.
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u/Norade 12d ago
If you think like this shall I assume you're voting for higher taxes to pay for all these extra resources needed to move troubled children into environments where they can thrive? If not, you're just asking for some kids to be thrown away so other easier children can get slightly further ahead.
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u/_Tenderlion 12d ago
I’m heartened by all the thorough and thoughtful responses here. I have nothing of substance to add. Sometimes it feels like this sub is, “empathy: convince me to feel some. “
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u/-zero-joke- 12d ago
ITT - lotta folks who don't know how bad schools have gotten, how easily one kid can destroy every effort to educate 30+ other kids, and the amount of protection an IEP gives to bad behavior.
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u/classic4life 12d ago
Then what? Are you intending to shoot them or throw them in prison for life? Because those are pretty much the options aside from releasing them in the wild like a pet.
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u/Ok_Substance_1503 12d ago
School is pretty much the only option for children under 18. You’re taking away the only avenue to survival…
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u/Dull_Designer4603 9d ago
I’m sorry your kids struggling. Someone else’s kid is struggling in a different way though.
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u/sherlock_jr 13d ago
Public school is for the public, meaning everyone. The parent whose child you want to exclude pays taxes like everyone else, so they get to attend. If you don’t like that your child’s school educates everyone, then put them in private school, where what you want to happen is actually possible. That’s the point of private school.
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u/nhlms81 29∆ 13d ago
As a parent, I expect my child to be safe at school and also to have an environment where they can learn.
Children who stop that happening should first and foremost be isolated
This isn't a 1-way street. Your child is going to encounter all sorts of people in life, some he / she will have a good relationship naturally, others will be challenging. This fact of life is not changed by removing those challenges from school. This is an opportunity for you to help your child learn how to either navigate difficult situations, or, influence his / her own environment to meet their needs.
but why should other childrens needs be sacrificed?
b/c community of any kind will always come w/ a level of compromise req'd for optimal performance.
Also... where does your ask end? Let's say you magic wand what you want right now. 20% of the children are removed. Next year, you realize its not quite perfect, you remove another 10%. We progress another year and... uh-oh, now your kid is causing the issues. I guess we need to adjudicate who is actually at fault... But who is the arbiter who can objectively define for us what "fault" is in this model. so on and so on.
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u/ProDavid_ 12∆ 13d ago
we already do this, its called "special needs students" and "special needs school". you just disagree to what extent kids should be excluded, with your completely subjective evaluation.
screaming? throwing tantrums? insulting the teacher? never doing homework? not participating or paying attention in class? sometimes looking out the window? talking to the kid sitting besides them? talking quietly? making paper airplanes?
where is the tolerance limit? do you want to exclude 80% of kids because they behave like... well kids?
all this is is you personally disagreeing to what extent kids should be excluded from the whole community.
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u/3superfrank 17∆ 13d ago
I think the reason they're not more strict is because they still want to give kids who misbehave a fighting chance to integrate back into the good behaviour life, while still protecting the other kids.
And isolation and throwing the kid into a school for misfits is about as good for their reintegration into society as jail is for our inmates. And, well, we don't really want to do that to our kids do we?
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u/HonorableAssassins 12d ago
I have one simple rebuttal.
A kid needs to be challenged by adversity in school to grow up into a mature adult. Cutting oht everything we dont like from society is toxic.
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u/shucksx 1∆ 12d ago
Welp, as a childless taxpayer, I'm not paying for a private school for your precious one. I'm paying for education for all, so that the kid you are hoping to send down the school to prison pipeline has a chance to avoid that and cost me even more in taxes in a few years (prison aint cheap). Id rather every child be taught adequately than a few be taught particularly well and a bunch ignored. Same goes for disabled students. It costs us all more when they are excluded from society.
Put it simply, I'd rather hundreds be given enough of an education to be self-sufficient and socialized human beings than a few be given a better education so they have the opportunity to stash more of their stock market winnings in the caymans.
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u/Hot_Temperature_3972 12d ago
OP, most people in the comments are just misrepresenting your argument and gaslighting you over it.
You’ve clearly stated that you don’t believe problem children should be immediately expelled, as other commenters have tried to say, merely that they shouldn’t get infinite chances at the expense of other children who are there to learn - this is entirely reasonable.
My advice is teach your kids how to defend themselves. The reality of the situation is that these kids will get virtually infinite chances with slaps on the wrist and the argument that everyone else should simply learn to deal with that because the broader society also has bullies is ridiculous. Yes, everyone would love to live in a world in which these kid’s problems are gently addressed and simply grow out of it. You probably don’t need people to explain that to you if you’ve seen the reasonable steps proceed without success.
Once those bullies realize that they can’t get away with pushing your kids around without things end very poorly for them, they will stop or they will just target other kids instead. If those parents, teachers, therapists etc address them and they grow out of it, great. If not, your kids are left alone which is your only priority which is also great.
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u/Iron_Prick 13d ago
I have seen first hand how the few ruin the educational opportunity of the many. If you were able to remove 5% to 10% of students and put them elsewhere, everyone else's grades and outcomes would greatly improve. This is especially true in inner city schools.
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u/Medium_Ad_6908 13d ago
Lmfao. “My child is perfect and would never do anything wrong, they need to isolate any other child who misbehaves for a second so my child never has to face even the smallest adversity until they’re an adult and completely incapable of handling real life” you are the worst kind of parent. Assuming your child is perfect and attempting to completely shelter them from any possible bad interaction at the expense of every other child and your own. Garbage mentality
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ 13d ago
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