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As someone who is both a former student with authority issues and a former high school teacher, this story leaves me with a whole bunch of feelings. You would t

As someone who is both a former student with authority issues and a former high school teacher, this story leaves me with a whole bunch of feelings. You would think that teachers have the maturity to be more or less immune to the impressions of teenagers, but it's actually quite a challenge to maintain face [1] as the instructional leader of dozens of humans. In my experience in Teach For America, it was a fashionable meme that it's the adults that make education hard, not the children. But I think that's not quite honest. While adults are ultimately responsible for everything that's wrong with education, on a day to day basis, you're put in very delicate and stressful situations with children, who are impulsive, emotional, and myopic. It's really, really hard to deal with adolescents at scale. Yet, in this case, like so many others, it's very clear that at some point, some of the adults decided that it was appropriate to wage total war on the child who offended them. They allowed their hurt feelings to suspend their sense of empathy and proportionality. Even worse, as the role models for the school, they set a standard of absolutism and intolerance. I can identify with them, while also seeing how badly they failed to take the high road. It's interesting how this same dynamic has played out in criminal justice as well. We struggle with the ability to treat the incarcerated in a humane manner, to hold police accountable for their excesses, to provide security without domestic militarization, and to fully rehabilitate and reintegrate ex-cons into society. I guess it's probably an inherent tension in human society, when there is a boundary of authority. I just hope we can learn and progress. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_%28sociological_concept%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_%28sociological_concept%2...

microcolonel 11y ago
>While adults are ultimately responsible for everything that's wrong with education, on a day to day basis, you're put in very delicate and stressful situations with children, who are impulsive, emotional, and myopic. It's really, really hard to deal with adolescents at scale. I'm not sure that this can truly be qualified. The statement that their job entails a stressful situation, does not (inherently) excuse them from inviting it. This is the same argument used by or on behalf of police officers who abuse their post(i.e. He had a hell of a day, witnessed two murders, so it's understandable that he just shot a minor suspect for fleeing). One might forget that they don't need to be a police officer or school teacher, that they made a free and conscious decision to be one and feel no shame for failing at it. The problem is that individual teachers do not, on their own, have as much ability to make the situation a good one; it takes an effort from the entire system(from other teachers to headteachers to parents to politicians) to change the day-to-day reality, and so it seems as though the situation is "out of our hands".
- acjohnson55 11y ago
  I hope it's clear from my original comment that I 100% agree. My point was that from moment to moment, teachers are human beings. They're going to have human feelings and make mistakes. I can empathize with the initial hurt feelings and perception of loss of control. But I'm not justifying their behaviors in response, by any means. Shooting a human is a mistake orders of magnitude beyond what I'm talking about. And in this story, it's inexcusable that some of the teachers and the principle were able to de-empathize with the author so much, due to their bruised egos and sense of authority, that they put on a prolonged Draconian push to expel the author. Reminds me of MIT and Aaron Schwartz.
blazespin 11y ago
Oh come on, I dropped out of grade 12 (did not complete) and went on to be very successful in college and then university. Getting suspended in high school is really no big deal. This is hardly war.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  It says 'expelled', not suspended. Totally different outcome.
- hluska 11y ago
  The author closed the article with: That being said, I heartily do not recommend expulsion as a rite of passage for high school students. I’m fairly certain the extreme levels of stress and anxiety I experienced shaved a few years off my life. I went to a Catholic school with a noted hockey program where I was required to recite Jesus' family tree from Abraham through his parents and, in biology, had to remember to mention that evolution was more likely than creation, but God still started evolution (to this day, the words 'alpha and omega' hurt). Personally, I would have welcomed expulsion as between the hockey love and the jesus love, I was not exactly enamoured with the state of my education. Unfortunately, this didn't happen to you or me. It happened to someone who experienced a massive amount of stress as a result. And over what?? Some dipshit adults who decided to squander a learning opportunity in the name of showing how tough they were??
- solistice 11y ago
  But then there's a difference in dropping out and being expelled, and as someone who was expelled from highschool, it can seem devastating at the time it happens, even if it has minor impact on your future life. Being ground through the wheels for school administration is a harrowing experience for any teenager. Matter of fact, my little brother who also went through an expulsion has still not quite recovered. The school suspended him for months in middle school, and I think it has impaired his ability to function as a student. When we tried getting him into the German school system again, he failed his reentry exam out of anxiety (he most likely knew the answers, he just filled in nothing), and another year of schooling at a lower tiered school because he couldn't bring himself to fill in exams for the first half of the school year. So I certainly would not discount the impact an expulsion can have on a student, and I think that school administrators should not use it lightly. It could work out just fine, or utterly demoralize a student that most likely is already marginalized.
code_sterling 11y ago
It's interesting, I graduated from that school in '92, and I was surprised when I read it. The faculty I knew, most would have encouraged such a project. My drafting teacher let me do a 3point of a x-wing for my final project. The school let me take 3 years of art in one year. I got caught smoking in the stairwell, and was just told to go outside. I did nudes, a controversial art projects that my college would have raised an eye to. This wasn't a bad school, or at least it wasn't the 5 years before this story occurs. So while I'm sure this happened, my own experience makes me believe that were not getting the whole picture.
- toyg 11y ago
  The difference is that your experiences didn't directly challenge any member of staff. You might have challenged some abstract rule or social norm, but you likely did not personally and publicly attack a teacher. This guy named names and went personal, he crossed a much bigger line. His "crime" was not to lampoon the official magazine, but to personally attack school staff. I don't think any school, as good as it might be, would have tolerated that (although they could have handled it better, as he pointed out).
  - laumars 11y ago
    The difference is the teachers took it personally. The crime was serious, but not expulsion serious. But authoritive figures often overreact when their very governance is questioned. Which, like the author, is a lesson I've had to learn the hard way (albeit I never landed myself in quiet as serious trouble as the aforementioned)
    - njharman 11y ago
      > The crime What crime!
    - spacehome 11y ago
      > The crime "The crime"? Did we read the same article? What crime was committed? Making a low-tech version of ratemypreofessors.com?
erikpukinskis 11y ago
> I guess it's probably an inherent tension in human society, when there is a boundary of authority. It's for that reason I think authority should be used as an organizational tool of last resort. Sadly it is the first thing many people reach for when they have a problem to solve.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  Last resort implies it would mostly never be used. But do we have any reason to believe flat hierarchy could ever be effective in a 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 person organization? I'd also direct you to some of the discussions of the subversive hierarchies that evolved under the surface of 2nd wave femenist, supposedly flat, groups.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Maybe we should also have less 10,000+ person organizations. The note about informal hierarchies arising in the absence of formal ones is very true, but that doesn't mean we can't reduce the problem if we aren't naive about it.
    - sliverstorm 11y ago
      ... and isn't the best way to combat the problem of informal hierarchies, to put formal ones in place eliminating the power vacuum?
      - icebraining 11y ago
        Well, not if your goal is avoiding hierarchies.

microcolonel 11y ago

>While adults are ultimately responsible for everything that's wrong with education, on a day to day basis, you're put in very delicate and stressful situations with children, who are impulsive, emotional, and myopic. It's really, really hard to deal with adolescents at scale. I'm not sure that this can truly be qualified. The statement that their job entails a stressful situation, does not (inherently) excuse them from inviting it. This is the same argument used by or on behalf of police officers who abuse their post(i.e. He had a hell of a day, witnessed two murders, so it's understandable that he just shot a minor suspect for fleeing). One might forget that they don't need to be a police officer or school teacher, that they made a free and conscious decision to be one and feel no shame for failing at it. The problem is that individual teachers do not, on their own, have as much ability to make the situation a good one; it takes an effort from the entire system(from other teachers to headteachers to parents to politicians) to change the day-to-day reality, and so it seems as though the situation is "out of our hands".

acjohnson55 11y ago
I hope it's clear from my original comment that I 100% agree. My point was that from moment to moment, teachers are human beings. They're going to have human feelings and make mistakes. I can empathize with the initial hurt feelings and perception of loss of control. But I'm not justifying their behaviors in response, by any means. Shooting a human is a mistake orders of magnitude beyond what I'm talking about. And in this story, it's inexcusable that some of the teachers and the principle were able to de-empathize with the author so much, due to their bruised egos and sense of authority, that they put on a prolonged Draconian push to expel the author. Reminds me of MIT and Aaron Schwartz.

blazespin 11y ago

Oh come on, I dropped out of grade 12 (did not complete) and went on to be very successful in college and then university. Getting suspended in high school is really no big deal. This is hardly war.

jacquesm 11y ago
It says 'expelled', not suspended. Totally different outcome.
hluska 11y ago
The author closed the article with: That being said, I heartily do not recommend expulsion as a rite of passage for high school students. I’m fairly certain the extreme levels of stress and anxiety I experienced shaved a few years off my life. I went to a Catholic school with a noted hockey program where I was required to recite Jesus' family tree from Abraham through his parents and, in biology, had to remember to mention that evolution was more likely than creation, but God still started evolution (to this day, the words 'alpha and omega' hurt). Personally, I would have welcomed expulsion as between the hockey love and the jesus love, I was not exactly enamoured with the state of my education. Unfortunately, this didn't happen to you or me. It happened to someone who experienced a massive amount of stress as a result. And over what?? Some dipshit adults who decided to squander a learning opportunity in the name of showing how tough they were??
solistice 11y ago
But then there's a difference in dropping out and being expelled, and as someone who was expelled from highschool, it can seem devastating at the time it happens, even if it has minor impact on your future life. Being ground through the wheels for school administration is a harrowing experience for any teenager. Matter of fact, my little brother who also went through an expulsion has still not quite recovered. The school suspended him for months in middle school, and I think it has impaired his ability to function as a student. When we tried getting him into the German school system again, he failed his reentry exam out of anxiety (he most likely knew the answers, he just filled in nothing), and another year of schooling at a lower tiered school because he couldn't bring himself to fill in exams for the first half of the school year. So I certainly would not discount the impact an expulsion can have on a student, and I think that school administrators should not use it lightly. It could work out just fine, or utterly demoralize a student that most likely is already marginalized.

code_sterling 11y ago

It's interesting, I graduated from that school in '92, and I was surprised when I read it. The faculty I knew, most would have encouraged such a project. My drafting teacher let me do a 3point of a x-wing for my final project. The school let me take 3 years of art in one year. I got caught smoking in the stairwell, and was just told to go outside. I did nudes, a controversial art projects that my college would have raised an eye to. This wasn't a bad school, or at least it wasn't the 5 years before this story occurs. So while I'm sure this happened, my own experience makes me believe that were not getting the whole picture.

toyg 11y ago
The difference is that your experiences didn't directly challenge any member of staff. You might have challenged some abstract rule or social norm, but you likely did not personally and publicly attack a teacher. This guy named names and went personal, he crossed a much bigger line. His "crime" was not to lampoon the official magazine, but to personally attack school staff. I don't think any school, as good as it might be, would have tolerated that (although they could have handled it better, as he pointed out).
- laumars 11y ago
  The difference is the teachers took it personally. The crime was serious, but not expulsion serious. But authoritive figures often overreact when their very governance is questioned. Which, like the author, is a lesson I've had to learn the hard way (albeit I never landed myself in quiet as serious trouble as the aforementioned)
  - njharman 11y ago
    > The crime What crime!
  - spacehome 11y ago
    > The crime "The crime"? Did we read the same article? What crime was committed? Making a low-tech version of ratemypreofessors.com?

erikpukinskis 11y ago

> I guess it's probably an inherent tension in human society, when there is a boundary of authority. It's for that reason I think authority should be used as an organizational tool of last resort. Sadly it is the first thing many people reach for when they have a problem to solve.

sliverstorm 11y ago
Last resort implies it would mostly never be used. But do we have any reason to believe flat hierarchy could ever be effective in a 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 person organization? I'd also direct you to some of the discussions of the subversive hierarchies that evolved under the surface of 2nd wave femenist, supposedly flat, groups.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Maybe we should also have less 10,000+ person organizations. The note about informal hierarchies arising in the absence of formal ones is very true, but that doesn't mean we can't reduce the problem if we aren't naive about it.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    ... and isn't the best way to combat the problem of informal hierarchies, to put formal ones in place eliminating the power vacuum?
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Well, not if your goal is avoiding hierarchies.