Suspend Suspensions?
By: Regina Ms
Tags: New York, Schools, Black Kids, System, Criminal Justice

Suspend Suspensions?

Schools should implement programs of counseling in their educational system to help children and teenagers deal with their problems. “At the very least, our educational system should implement effective approaches as early as possible in children’s lives to assist them in coping with traumatic experiences. Necessarily, each school, city, district, and state will have a unique approach depending on the needs of the institution and its students (pg. 4).” These programs should start in their primary school. Children with problems in their house is more likely to behavior badly. The educational system believes the suspensions is an effective way to punish the kid. In my opinion, the suspensions do not function as it is intended to be, because the effect of the punishment depends on the situation.

In case of the student who has very bad behavior like being aggressive or bullying another classmate, they must be suspended, and a home assignment should be given to them. In this assignment they must describe their own wrongdoings in an essay form. For example, the student who behave in a racist manner should be obliged to write an essay of 30 pages about racism. “Because of zero tolerance policies, “disruptive behavior” and “other” violations are the basis for suspensions. These violations include significant numbers of students charged with being defiant and being disruptive. 25 Many of the violations involve subjective or discretionary judgments by teachers or school administrators; Black students are disproportionately suspended for these behaviors (pg. 5).” Most of children who shows behavior problems are the ones to be suspended by the school. This includes the minority Latinos and black kids

Unfortunately, black kids, girls and boys, are target of discrimination from the facility of schools. They have prejudice against these kids and do a lot of unjust things with them. According to the New York Post, African American students are nearly four times as likely to be suspended from school as White kids, even if the reason of disciplining is the same. “According to a 2018 government report, schools have a discrimination problem when comes to discipline. Black student gets disciplined more harshly and more often than white classmates for the same kind misbehavior (0:34).” I remember, when I was a kid (even later, in college, work etc.) I was frequently victim of bullying and when I decided to do something on my own, that was because the administration at school doesn’t believe in my complaints. They always blamed me and never try understanding what I was trying to explain.

Everything become difficult when we are speaking about the poverty of families. Most of them doesn’t have time to help their kids, and they expected the school do the parenting instead of themselves. The kids stay most of their time at school. Bad behavior at school must be treated seriously. Parents or Guardians should participate in meeting and assemblies where these issues are presented. I believe it is a fundamental part of the process to change the educational system. They must be involved in the resolution of these problems at school. The government is part of the development of these individuals together with the educational system. They need to improve handling a lot of these issues. Overall, the improvement in our educational system will changed many other things like, decrease of number of violent situations, suicide and criminal behaviors.

Work Cited

Yaroshefsky. Ellen and Shwedel. Anna. “Changing the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Integrating Trauma Informed Care in the New York City School System”. Page 4 and 5. Hofstra Law.2015

Lartaud. Derek. “Should Schools Suspend Suspensions?”. “Do School Suspensions Work?”. (0:34). “Above the Noise.” March. 22. 2019. https://www.kqed.org/education/531472/should-schools-suspend-suspensions.