Under the laws governing Maryland schools, a student who is expelled is barred from from attending any Maryland public school for one year from the date of her/his expulsion. In a normal year that is rarely an issue for me. In 12 previous years in Maryland schools, and in one year in Virginia, I think I have had a total of 4 students from my classes put up for expulsion, of whom two were expelled. In my other duties in school I have been involved in two expulsion cases, in one of which the student was expelled (for assaulting me) and in the other was allowed to return and graduate that year after a 6 week suspension.
Somehow this year is different. Yesterday I was informed of the sixth student from this year's classes put up for expulsion. The first three came from one incident in a computer lab, and two are gone, one of which was withdrawn before his expulsion was final (I do not know about the other). In the last 3 weeks I have had 3 students suspended pending expulsion. One wonders why. None is being expelled for incidents in my class. But what is going on?
Our rules are fairly clear. Group fights, going to another school for a fight, arson (including bomb threats), assaulting a school system employee, drugs and alcohol if serious enough, serious property damage, serious injury to another student . . . all common sense reasons to want to exclude a student.
But I wonder what the impact is. I remember my first expulsion clearly. She was living with her grandmother after having gotten into serious trouble in DC. She was on probation there, and on the day she cleared her probation, her grandmother dropped her off at the school grounds. Unfortunately, there were some trespassers on the edge of our parking lot dealing drugs who would be arrested 10 minutes later. She purchased, checked into school, went into a bathroom and smoked, then came into my classroom clearly high, with sunglasses on, and not willing to be responsive to instructions. I called for an administrator or security guard, two came, they took one whiff and told her "Dear, we are opening your purse" whereupon they found 90 grams of marijuana, which in Maryland is felony sell weight. She left the doorway in serious custody. She was a 14 year old 9th grader.
The one this time? S/he has real emotional control issues. Correct behavior and s/he is likely to throw a scene, screaming "Oh my God!" as s/he stamps a foot and makes a face. All year I have been struggling to help this student get control. It has been a balance of being strict versus intervening with the administrator for some flexibility when s/he was making an effort. But s/he assaulted an adult - s/he lost her temper when behavior was verbally corrected and scratched the adult. S/he is bright, but has never learned how to behave. And now s/he will not only be expelled, but have a criminal record, fortunately so far as a juvenile.
I am torn. There have to be limits. A student cannot be allowed to tell an adult to "fuck off." No student should assault anyone. And yet far too many of young people have never had the kind of structure and discipline that leads to development of self-control. One mistake, albeit major as in the case of an assault, and their lives are effectively destroyed.
I am an adult. Today I did something very stupid. It was actually a follow-on to something I had previously failed to do. I was wrong. I accepted responsibility. The consequences for me are not severe. After all, I did not curse, or assault someone, or violate drug laws. I did something probably worse. I failed to stand on a principle that really mattered. Because I was unthinking, as was my student unthinking when s/he reacted in anger and scratched. S/he was not cold and calculating as was the former VP when he told a ranking US Senator to go fuck himself. He suffered no consequences.
Once a Republican House leader referred to a senior House member from MA as Barney Fag. In our school a student doing that would get at least a 3-day period in in-school detention. Yet this leader, a mature adult, was allowed to simply apologize, with no further consequences.
I struggle with the discipline we impose upon our students. That I impose upon students. But we have little choice. So many have so little self-control. Far too often they think rules matters only if they get caught. Then they try to talk their way out of it. Perhaps promising never to do it again.
Why not? Think of their models - in business and government, in the military and the CIA. Those people are not held accountable, so why should the students believe they have to be held accountable?
Expulsion. A harsh-sounding word, whose sound does not carry the full gravity of its meaning.
We had a president whose behavior was considered offensive. He was impeached in part because some felt the example he was setting was so poor that it might lead our children to dangerous conclusions.
What then about behavior of business leaders? Of regulators who did not regulate? Of legislators who enabled, perhaps in return for campaign contributions or cushy jobs?
A child curses an adult and goes home for 3 days. A high-ranking government official justifies crushing the testicles of a child before his father as a means of getting information and still holds an important position in a prestigious institution of legal learning.
A child scratches an adult and gets put up for expulsion. A general oversees brutalization of people at Guantanamo and gets a promotion and instructions to apply the same techniques at Abu Ghraib.
What is right and what is wrong? Is something wrong only when it is done by someone without power or office or prestige or money? Is the action of the favored, the leader, those with authority and power, automatically forgiven, or at least overlooked/
If we are going to expel school children for offenses that are ultimately relatively minor, even as we acknowledge their seriousness, how then do we justify mass criminals walking free among us, drawing government pensions?
We allow people who did acts of protest 40+ years ago in the hopes of stopping a brutal war to still be demonized, harassed, excluded. And we refuse to hold accountable those whose words and deeds have led to the deaths of thousands upon thousands, the shredding of the Bill of Rights, the loss of respect for our nation.
Something is wrong.
Expulsion. Perhaps that term should be the equivalent of what some religious groups do for those whose actions are simply beyond the pale. Perhaps we should be expelling from our midst those who have done the truly perverse, who have wreaked havoc upon our economy, our national image, our civil liberties. . .
Instead we expel teenagers, and some even younger, for offenses that pale in comparison.
Tonight I am very sad. I am also angry and frustrated. Hence this rant.
Perhaps that means I will be expelled, because I dare offer the thought that our values are so skewed that we fail to recognize that the actions of some of our school children are but a pale reflection of the moral decay of so many of our adults?
How truly sad. How depressing.
And I have no answers.