Schools that do that sort of thing are the fucking worst.

I'll go ahead and admit that I got bullied a lot at my first high school, for being a combination of gullable/fat/dorky as well as, for most of my time there, the only person of my skin color.

My last day 'in' the school, I had my head slammed against a locker multiple times by a Starter of the Women's basketball team, and was later threatened with being shot by the Football QB.

For retorting that "They'd pull the bullets out of you" to said QB (Mind you, I had all but recieved a concussion 2 hours prior) My family was first told that I was given an 'at home' suspension till the end of the semester. They told my parents that I could come back in-school next semester.

However, it was not until the *end* of that first semester that they finally said 'actually, you'd have to stay home the rest of the year'.

By that time, almost every school in the district was 2-4 weeks into their classes. There was no way I could get in.

The second half of my Junior Year of High school, I instead had to take night classes with people who were either trying to get their GED, or were simply there because of some form of court order to get their GED (i.e. they weren't trying.)

The ultimate irony of all of this, that first high school, I was a 'D+' student practically. The school I went to for my senior year, I actually wound up getting a B average for that year.

Yeah. Some schools institutionally set people up for failure. In my case, it was because there was a HUGE scandal that erupted a year or two after I left; many of those Student athletes were having their tuition paid by third parties, more or less so that they could play for that school.

You mention tuition, was it a private school?

Yeah. A Religious Private School.

How is this relevant? If it's a private school or public school, parents/schools are trying to juke the system to get the Ws on the scoreboards. If it's a private school or public, bullying is a thing. Someone being abused and then they are the ones to get the punishment when defending themselves by striking back is a complete bassackwards way of handling any problem like this.

It's possible that people who haven't spent time in private schools have the romantic notion that they're privileged havens where everything is easy.

It's also possible they were fishing for a connection to 'cover-up' corruption in a Religious institution. In which case they'd be right.

it's terrifying

Why not name them?

Because the school has been gone for somewhere around 15 years, and the administrators involved are all retired or passed away.

Sometimes, you have to let go of anger over a situation... but still remember it as a compass of empathy.

I don't have the solution. When do forgive and when do we take action so no one else is hurt like we were? Both are emphatic and compassionate but the latter makes one feel as an aggressor instead of a defender like one truly is. It's confusing.

> At that point you're basically expelling the student.

Worse than expelled. An expelled student can pick back up at another school far more easily than a student who remains enrolled, who would now have to waste time stepping through the voluntary transfer request process.

Not that it would make a substantial difference in this case. Gwinnett County Public Schools covers an immense area. An expelled student is likely to end up in another GCPS school for lack of access to any other public schooling options. Long term "suspension" may be the only way to effectively expel a student from the district, if that was someone's goal.

Another fun punishment that far outweighed the crime, my Algebra teacher assigned me lunch detention in 7th grade for every day I didn't do my homework. I made it a grudge match, and ended up serving 181 total days of lunch detention that year. I barely passed, and on the last day of class he told me to never come back to his classroom. It was a helpful reminder at a young age that old people can be equally as petty (if not moreso) than young people.

I was similar to you. Picked grudge matches I felt and to a degree still feel were justified. It’s only really as I’ve seen my friends and some partners become teachers I’ve realized that it’s mostly (not in every case) one sided. The really harsh truth is they barely think about it. Even if it’s a regular thing. Just a git commit.

My sixth grade teacher decided that I would be sent outside of all her classes (all of them except music and PE) if I missed any homework I had failed to do from the start of the course. She didn’t even notified the principal, which asked for an explanation when he found me wandering on the soccer field the 5th day this occurred and then notified my parents. After a series of homework related problems where even the principal had to intervene on my behalf, I was able to pass grade, only for the same teacher who had been teaching the same grade for more than 10 years to pursue a change of grade. Afterwards, since the principal on which was in charge of the following grade was more sympathetic to her case, I was spelled of said school because I missed 5 homeworks in 2 months. Afterwards I heard the teacher came back to her old position.

To this date, I still don’t understand what the hell was going on on her mind, yeah, I was irresponsible, I was defiant, as there was some formalisms which I found absurd. But I was a quiet child, who payed attention to class and wanted to be left on his own and was able to ace any test because I did like learning. I didn’t even had friends so it’s not like I interrupted her class with any chatter. I guess the lesson is that some people are petty?

Since it was a grudge - have you ever thought of ever calling them up as an adult and telling them a piece of your mind? They're likely the same kind of adult as they were back then. Maybe being told how their actions were stupid could bring them down a peg?

I feel like there was plenty of pettiness on both sides here.

Yes, except one was a 7th grader.

As far as school punishments go this one seems a relatively benign and actually almost reasonable? You chose not to do the homework, so the teacher assigned you a mandatory time during which you could complete the homework without being distracted during lunch.

From the details you provided,my understanding is you could've just completed it during lunch detention and that would've been the end of it, that seems pretty fair to me. You were aware of the consequences of not doing your homework and chose to continuously not do your assignments either at home or during the lunch period.

Because teachers have rotating lunch duties because it's often against their contract to make them work more than x lunches per week/month, while the child can be arbitrarily put in punishment for more than that.

Just because he was aware of the punishment doesn't make the punishment appropriate. At some point the issue should be escalated or a compromise reached. Allowing to it go on for the majority of the school year is the teacher being unable to control the situation so taking it out on the student to the students detriment instead of benefit.

> You chose not to do the homework ...

Bull. Schools only have authority over you while you're on their grounds.

Once school time is over, they can want whatever they like. Just like anybody.

They have no authority to actually do anything about it though, nor should they. Homework is just them trying to waste people's time.

While I agree with the broader point, this is grade A BS and I think you know it.

Anyone who's ever spent time in a classroom viewing the experience with an objective eye knows that teachers can't be reasonably expected to teach everything they need to within the constraints given to them. As a result, they assign homework (reading, projects, busywork) over the course of the semester to ensure that the knowledge they're asked to pass on actually sinks in to the minds of the students.

Good teachers make good homework. Bad teachers make bad homework, but not necessarily because they're trying to waste their students' time.

Most homework during K-12 was time wasting busywork I doubt it was much different for anyone else. I think the broader point was that only a child has a grudge match with a child. The penalty for not doing homework is a zero on that portion of the class. Let them hurt their own grade if they insist. The math teacher was a childish incompetent unfit for his position.

Again, that's bull. There is no need for homework.

Maybe in exceptional circumstances to achieve a specific once-off outcome, but not in _any_ way as a routine thing.

Please, stop encouraging people to waste kids time. :(

The problem is he got detention for not doing an assignment which he could do at home. I don't understand how American schools can detain children like that.

My high school had a maximum of ten days for a suspension but ten absences during a semester was an automatic failure so there would no longer be any reason for the student to come to school. It was a sneaky way of expelling a student without actually going through the process of expelling them officially.

Ten days coming from the dicta in the Goss v. Lopez ruling to avoid greater constitutional scrutiny. If ten days led to an automatic failure, however, I doubt it would be considered minimal under that ruling anymore.

My local school district never “expels” anyone. They “suspend” then for two years (max).

Apparently its because of a state law that defines “expulsion” and “suspension” in specific ways.

“Expulsion” means the district has completely absolved itself of any educational responsibility to the student.

“Suspension” means a students access to school facilities had been restricts or removed.

In practice, formal expulsions are archaic. No one has been formally expelled for decades: including the student who raped multiple classmates in the stairwell.

It’s a language thing, not a real thing.

How does expulsion play out with the school's finances?

It’s very, very expensive. The state constitution guarantees a right to an education. While it’s possible to deny someone that right based on poor behavior (like many other rights), it’s a big deal.

If you mean does an expelled student mean reduced funding … I don’t know. Maybe nobody knows. It hasn’t happened in decades.

When a student is suspended there’s usually some provision made for their education: individual learning.

The district is still doing something for them.

With expulsion, it’s as though the student is a non resident for purposes of registration. I don’t know if that applies to funding.

I suspect there was bureaucratic and personal digging in once the district and its technical staff were challenged.

You know that Family Guy meme with the skin tones?

Welcome to America, where we use political correctness to put people of color in their place. We’re only a couple decades removed from that kid getting a beating by the cops, so things are improving. So three months suspension is getting off light. Our schools don’t have solitary confinement yet but I’m sure we’ll get there someday.

Sure, we could try treating the student as a person, but that just makes it harder for society to exact the retribution it so deeply desires.

> Our schools don’t have solitary confinement yet

"The spaces have gentle names: The reflection room. The cool-down room. The calming room. The quiet room.

But shut inside them, in public schools across the state, children as young as 5 wail for their parents, scream in anger and beg to be let out."

https://features.propublica.org/illinois-seclusion-rooms/sch...

Stuff like this is so infuriating to read. I work in a preschool and there is absolutely a way to have kids take a short break away from others without literally torturing them.

Its genuinely hard to read stories like that and think about the kind of teachers that exist in some areas. And its clearly systemic in a lot of situations.

> and beg to be let out.

If the school doesn't forget they're there. It's happened at least twice in Washington, where parents have wondered why their child wasn't on the bus, only to learn that not only had the school put them in such a room, they'd then managed to _forget_ the student was in there.

You’re begging the question: does any of this actually prevent the “toxic masculinity” you’re referring to?

The article quite clearly says no. Moreover, “toxic masculinity” is a political dog-whistle, not a legitimate psychological concept.

EDIT: ffs don't flag the parent poster. He's misinformed and possibly ideologically driven (though I've seen far worse), but enough with the censorship bubble, already ...

> “toxic masculinity” is a political dog-whistle, not a legitimate psychological concept.

This is misleading at best. Toxic masculinity has been written about in great detail and at great length in academia (in gender/women's studies literature) for going on 30 years.

> Toxic masculinity has been written about in great detail and at great length

Generating literature about a postulation doesn't make it true.

How would you ever controvert a bad practice like icepick lobotomies, or a false belief like Aristotelian gravity, if the simple existence or popular acceptance of an idea were considered to be its proof?

All-right, I'll bite.

What words would you prefer people use to describe a particular kind of behaviour, common to, but not exclusive to young men that is in generous parts mysoginistic, often homophobic and violent?

Bit of a loaded question, isn't it?

It's a response to a bit of a loaded statement. What does the parent poster even mean that a descriptive term isn't 'true'?

That the behaviour it describes doesn't exist? That would be a truly remarkable claim.

That the term is inapplicable to that behaviour? On what grounds? Is there a term they'd prefer we use?

That the behaviour exists, but we shouldn't slap a label on it? That's almost certainly personal opinion, which is not very interesting.

If the OP would have instead said that particular claims about toxic masculinity are false, that would be an entirely different conversation. But that's not what they did.

>in gender/women's studies literature

I rest my case. It is not a legitimate psychological concept.

But probably also not a mere dog whistle. Psycological "concept" and "dog whistle" are not the only two things an idea could be.

That's fair. 'Dog whistle' is a bit inexact, but it's not completely off the mark either, I think.

> there a chance that it's worth it?

Little to none as there is no evidence of theraputic value.

Indeed, it seems clearly harmful and would qualify as child abuse if it were sone by the parents rather than the school district.

The use of this technique on children with Autism is particularly reprehensible.

This is just time out. Any parent of a high-maintenance 5-year-old will know that some kids act out, assault their peers, have tantrums and scream and yell. Other kids don’t deserve to be subjected to that.

Edit: To be clear, I’m responding to the quote here. I’m not condoning locking small children in bare rooms alone for hours on end.

Because a 3 ft by 3 ft by 7 ft upright locking coffin is a PERFECT place for timeout.

Because that’s clearly what I was saying, right?

It does appear to be what you are saying. The linked article is discussing how common it is For schools to lock young children in tiny rooms by themselves.

One room in the article is described as 3x3x7 and another is even smaller at 5 sq feet. These are literally the rooms we are discussing and that you are defending using for timeouts.

Edit: It appears from your edit that you simply may have not read the article and thus did not realize what you were endorsing.

I added the edit about 2 minutes after I made the original post.

It's literally exactly what you said...?

Before clicking the article I already guessed the student was black.

“How US schools punish Black kids”https://www.vox.com/videos/21507661/school-discipline-race-b...

Schools do in fact have solitary confinement rooms.

https://features.propublica.org/illinois-seclusion-rooms/sch...

> Our schools don’t have solitary confinement

they sure did when I was a pupil, a zillion years ago. It was called "in-school detention"

'Isolation' in the UK, which doesn't beat about the bush much does it. I don't really see anything wrong with it.

(I'd say a 'detention' is broader, anything from a few minutes at the end of the lesson to isolation, passing break time, lunch, and after-school along the way.)

"The entire United Nations, including the US, passed “Mandela Rules” prohibiting solitary beyond 15 days for any person, because it otherwise would amount to torture."

Pretty sure school isolation isn't 15 days.

shocked the US didn't veto this

This doesn't seem to be a problem of race as far as I can tell but a kind of bureaucratic Kafkaesque face saving nightmare.

in the event a white kid was even the suspected perpetrator of this, it's exceptionally unlikely he would be given a 90 day suspension on completely bunk evidence

The kid is being accused of rape and mass murder threats, which seems like something the school should take seriously (although it does appear there may be serious issues with the evidence). They don't want him back there, but expulsion itself is strongly discouraged due to the "school-to-prison pipeline", so schools do weird things like this instead.

Something's weird with that. Gwinnett County schools are out for the summer starting late next week. Most of the "three months" will be when school isn't in session, unless he was planning to attend summer school.

Yeah I'm confused by how this played out.

I'm familiar with my local public schools policies, outside violence / other crimes they don't even have the ability to hand out that long of a punishment by rule.

No idea what that school is up to...