Awareness will bring progression.

When I was in 3rd grade, I wrote a “love letter” to a classmate. It may sound silly, but there’s a reason I never forgot this event. The note consisted of the Barney theme song and a request to “go on a date.” When I went to go place it in his desk, I was caught by a teaching aid. She stopped the reading session she was doing, and told me to bring the note to her. After reading it, she told my teacher of my “misbehavior”, and she then called the dean. Now of course at around 7-8 years old, I didn’t really understand the concept of things like dating or relationships, or even romance. I was simply repeating things I had heard from television. But these administrators treated the situation as if I did. I was sat by myself in the office, in the room by myself, in which I began to cry. The dean threatened to have me call my parents and read the note to them, which as a good kid I was terrified of because I never got in trouble. In the end, I was made to sit alone at the assembly a few minutes later, and it was settled at home, but for a lot of kids in school it doesn’t end that well.

The school system has become prone to unreasonable suspensions and expulsions, that ultimately result in arrests of tons of students, “..especially students of color and those with disabilities or who identify as LGBT.” says Mary Ellen Flannery in her article, School To Prison Pipeline. Students of color in public school specifically are greatly affected, taken out of school and away from their education, and basically being pawned into the wrong path, according to the statistics. “In 2010, more than 3 million students were suspended from school, or double the level of suspensions in the 1970s. Meanwhile, more than a quarter-million were “referred” to police officers for misdemeanor tickets, very often for offenses that once would have elicited a stern talking-to” (Mary Ellen Flannery). These numbers alone are only a part of the evidence that there’s something that needs to be addressed and fixed in schools and some no-tolerance policies.

“Black students are suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than white students. On average 4.6% of white students are suspended, compared to 16.4% of black students” (Civil Rights Data Collection, 2014). Whether you’d like to believe it or not, there is a clear discrimination between the groups of students being taken out of school. “The most common criticism of zero-tolerance policies is that students of color tend to be subjected to harsher punishments under zero-tolerance than their white counterparts” (Aaron J. Curtis). It may be for a couple of reasons, but I think a simple way to try and dilute these occurrences in general would be to create some room for these no-tolerance policies. Instead of immediately going to these resorts of suspension and or expulsion for things that go against the book, but in actuality may be minor incidents, administrators should have the opportunity and patience to assess the situation, determining whether it’s truly worthy of such punishments. Those in charge of these decisions should have the student’s ultimate well being in mind. If teachers and principals are taking the easy route by sending the students out of school, they take away not only education opportunity from them, but future opportunity as well. As said before, students have often been referred to police, and have gone on to be put into detention centers that are damaging to them, socially and mentally. An administrator should be able to look into their own intentions as well. Instead of acting on anger or past experience, be sure they giving justice and dealing with a student as an individual, not a statistic.

This may be more easily said than done, but for the youth and education system, those who want to see change have to be willing to make adjustments and go further in effort. Unjust punishments are given much too often for comfort, and it’s getting in the way of the student’s learning. This doesn’t just go for teenagers either, it can happen as early as kindergarten in some cases. “Consider the Maryland 7-year-old who was suspended in 2013 for chewing his Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun” (Mary Ellen Flannery). Some people may say teachers do not have enough time to focus on a single student’s situation all the time. But that’s no surprise. A system that has been performing the same way for such a long time will need to work hard to give a better outcome, and this is understood. Sarah Biehl, of the Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio says, “Suspending a kid or sending them to the office is easy and quick. The things we’re asking schools to do in place of those things are not easy and quick, the answers are complicated, and I understand teachers need resources and tools to make these changes.” It will take some work and consciousness to make change in the system, but once effort is made to fix that, the issues of discrimination amongst students should follow suit. With restorative mindsets we will get progression.