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Too many liberals feel such guilt about expelling disruptive kids, when the reality is just what you've said: if they stay, they don't improve and they ruin gen

Too many liberals feel such guilt about expelling disruptive kids, when the reality is just what you've said: if they stay, they don't improve and they ruin genuine learning for everyone else. It is so wrong for adults to fail to protect children who want to learn simply because they want a facade of feel-good egalitarianism.

afavour 3y ago
I think it’s correct to feel guilty about expelling disruptive kids. Majority of cases they’re disruptive as a direct result of their home life, which you’re now throwing them into full time. I agree that keeping them in general education is bad too, though. A caring society would take that kid somewhere with specialised staff that will help them work through their issues.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  You should feel more guilty of subjecting twenty kids to the spillover of that one child’s dysfunctional life. The problem is the selective and performative guilt: Why don’t kids who have a terrible home life, but are studying diligently to better themselves and improve their lives equally deserve our help?
  - civilized 3y ago
    Exactly - this is the tragic mistake of fixating on only one type of "victim".
  - busterarm 3y ago
    Kids should learn that other people have dysfunctional lives early so that they grow up with the capability of empathy towards others. Too many people are in their own bubble about how the world works. For this same reason I've always hated (since a kid) the way anti-drug education has been presented to children. It's not taken seriously and doesn't present the reality of how prevalent drug (even prescription) use is among adults in society. It doesn't treat prescription drug use, alcohol, nicotine or caffeine abuse with any weight whatsoever and doesn't prepare children for the reality of having to deal with people who are on drugs.
    - zmgsabst 3y ago
      All you’re teaching is that adults lack empathy towards them: Adults are intentionally victimizing the majority of students to cater to their own shallow virtue signaling.
      - busterarm 3y ago
        Everyone votes too. The government lacks empathy towards me by forcing me to have an equal vote with morons and criminals. There are scenarios in life where we're all in this together and excising people for their inconvenience isn't what's best for society. You don't just cast off disabled people into the void, for example. Unless you have a solution for where to put these problem public school kids that isn't juvenile detention, I don't want to hear it.
        vacuity 3y ago
        I hear you. It's no good for chronically disruptive kids to be in juvie all the time, but it's also no good for them to remain in classrooms. Any amount of pay won't salve the sheer stress of attempting to teach those who won't learn. It would be great if someone could just snap their fingers and give those kids stable homes or something. Unfortunately, I suspect the solution requires efforts on multiple fronts (ample food, housing, social support, etc.) and will be expensive, difficult, and slow.
        busterarm 3y ago
        The callousness of the HN commentariat towards those who "don't behave according to the rules" is off the charts these days. We're talking about children here. They don't know how to behave like adults yet. Cutting them out of society where they fail to meet expectations is cruelty.
        civilized 3y ago
        It seems to me that you recognize one kind of cruelty but not another, forcing innocent bystanders to have their education heavily disrupted.
  - afavour 3y ago
    I literally said “I agree that keeping them in general education is bad too” but I feel like you have a point you want to make irrespective of anything I’m saying so go on.
    - civilized 3y ago
      And I agree with you. It's right to recognize that there are no good options here. In such situations, it's important to consider the bad effects and victims on both sides, not fixate on one as the only morally correct one to consider.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    This is life though, that spillover doesn't disappear when you're an adult. You will always be subject to someone else's dysfunctional life unless you isolate yourself from society completely. We need to have structures that can address this behavior in a way that fosters societal integration. This "spillover" might not be a problem given proper staffing... but a 1:25 ratio is never enough to handle problems and never will be.
- tivert 3y ago
  > which you’re now throwing them into full time. Is that really possible in the US? IIRC, the government has a mandate to educate every child, including those that are extremely developmentally disabled (which is why special education is such a huge item in school budgets). If a kid is expelled from school, wouldn't the district be legally required to find some alternative arrangement?
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    No, the parent is. Worst case, they can be home schooled. Despite being treated as such, schools are not day cares, and parents still have some responsibility for the upbringing of their children. If the kid misbehaves enough, it is on the parent.
    - aidenn0 3y ago
      We might want it to work that way, but depending on which state it is, and the she of the child, the district's legal responsibilities might be what the GP wrote. In places with mandatory public education, parents suing the district for not providing education for their expelled child are likely to win.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  The school cannot fix the home life, so it should not try. Home life should be addressed by child services, etc. Granted in reality they are often as understaffed or as incompetent and corrupt as any other government service, but at least that's their mission. School teachers should not be doubling as social workers.
  - vacuity 3y ago
    There should be counselors to help ease the gap between school and home, but yes, teachers don't need even more burdens.
  - swores 3y ago
    I personally suspect that it would work better if schools had dedicated staff to deal with that side of stuff rather than only having those people in the separate child services organisation - maybe in such a way that it's the school social care team who directly work with the children & families (with a separate team at child services to do the same for any kids not attached to a school), while being able to call on support from central child services for either advice and guidance or for the use of an expert in a specific area when needed. But underfunding is a big problem whichever way it's structured, and I of course agree with you that it's not something you can just say "this is the responsibility of the teachers to do on top of their existing responsibilities".
boeingUH60 3y ago
And this feel-goodism causes serious long-term harm. It's better to discipline people displaying rogue behavior when they're young. This feel-goodism just pushes the consequences to when these people get old, and they end up in prison, unemployed, working dead-end jobs, or something similar...at that point no one cares because they assume the person is an adult that can take care of themselves.
- vacuity 3y ago
  Not to mention that behaviors become more ingrained with age.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lotsofpulp 3y ago
A Republican Congress with a Republican President in 2004 enacted the federal law that makes it difficult for public schools to expel disruptive children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEA_2004 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEA_2004 All a parent has to do is ask for an individualized education plan, IEP, and a public school will have to do a metric ton of cover your ass to be able to expel a child. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED495879.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED495879.pdf
- civilized 3y ago
  While much of what Bush did as President was not at all compassionate, he actually did believe in and try to practice compassionate conservatism. He made major concessions to liberal ways of thinking, some good and some not so good. A major good one was fighting AIDS in Africa. His education policies were on the not so good side.
  - latency-guy2 3y ago
    > He made major concessions to liberal ways of thinking, some good and some not so good. A major good one was fighting AIDS in Africa. This is not making concessions to "liberal ways of thinking".
    - civilized 3y ago
      I think it is. Part of liberalism is seeing all people as worthy of compassion and help, even if they're not closely related to you. While the contrasting tendency in conservatism is to help people closer to / more similar to us and protect ourselves from outsiders who we do not understand, may not benefit from our help, or may even exploit us. Both of these tendencies are valid and adaptive in different situations, they're just different and at least somewhat in opposition. Do you disagree?
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        I would think a truly liberal policy would be to provide funding for the “compassionate” policies. On the other hand, federally legislating that local school taxing districts provide services costing $x and if they do not, open up local taxpayers to litigation of $y where x and y are quite large is…something else. How is a poor school district serving poorer taxpayers supposed to provide expensive IEP for every problem child and/or collect all the evidence to expel them, and at the same time provide quality education to well behaved kids?
ElevenLathe 3y ago
The problem is that it just moves the issue around. If you expel a 5th grader, they will be at SOME school for at least several more years, since that is the law. All you're doing is making life more miserable for their parents as they have to arrange transportation to increasingly far flung school districts, and for the child as they are ripped away from all their friends every year when they are sent to a new school. I don't know what the answer is, but "all children are owed a public education and in fact we'll arrest their parents if they drop out" and "public schools can kick children out" are self-evidently not compatible policies.
- civilized 3y ago
  > All you're doing is making life more miserable for their parents as they have to arrange transportation to increasingly far flung school districts, and for the child as they are ripped away from all their friends every year when they are sent to a new school. That's not all we're doing. We're also protecting an entire classroom of children from disruptive behavior. If it's gotten to the point where we would consider expulsion, then some of those children, or their families, likely find that disruption so intolerable that they themselves would need to arrange transportation to far flung school districts. That's why so many underprivileged families are desperate to get their kids into charter schools. As I keep trying to point out in this comment tree, people seem to have learned that it's morally appropriate to talk about only one type of victim here. I don't agree. I think it's morally necessary to always discuss both the disruptive child and the classroom they are disrupting, always in the same breath.
  - ElevenLathe 3y ago
    If we suppose that this theoretical child is a problem that is disrupting their classroom, then we are not saving any children from that disruption, merely spreading it around. They will be a problem for one classroom this year, a different one next year, and so on. Assuming class sizes are the same, we will have on average the same number of disrupted-pupil-hours with the expulsions as without them, just a different distribution. If you want to argue it's a better distribution, or that there is some reason to believe expulsions will push "problem children" to smaller classrooms on average, then fine, but absent those arguments it's very clearly worse for the student and their parents but not better for anyone else (or rather, it's maybe better for specific other people, but also worse for yet other ones, and on average no better for anyone).
specialist 3y ago
Was the disruptive student. Am now very leftist. Some aspects do give me pause. Such as Any regiment which makes things worse. We're all just guessing; people need to be empowered, so hopefully they can muddle thru things. Thresholds need to be obvious and ruthlessly enforced. Not fuzzy and optional. (eg If a student assaults a teacher, insta removal, to never come back. And so forth.) Alas, forging these kinds of rulesets, and then sticking to them at scale, is all but impossible. Also, most people blathering about public education are repeatedly proven worse than wrong. (Including me.) So am deepyly skeptical of fixes and silver bullets. I insist there's at least some existence proof before supporting any reforms.

afavour 3y ago

I think it’s correct to feel guilty about expelling disruptive kids. Majority of cases they’re disruptive as a direct result of their home life, which you’re now throwing them into full time. I agree that keeping them in general education is bad too, though. A caring society would take that kid somewhere with specialised staff that will help them work through their issues.

zmgsabst 3y ago
You should feel more guilty of subjecting twenty kids to the spillover of that one child’s dysfunctional life. The problem is the selective and performative guilt: Why don’t kids who have a terrible home life, but are studying diligently to better themselves and improve their lives equally deserve our help?
- civilized 3y ago
  Exactly - this is the tragic mistake of fixating on only one type of "victim".
- busterarm 3y ago
  Kids should learn that other people have dysfunctional lives early so that they grow up with the capability of empathy towards others. Too many people are in their own bubble about how the world works. For this same reason I've always hated (since a kid) the way anti-drug education has been presented to children. It's not taken seriously and doesn't present the reality of how prevalent drug (even prescription) use is among adults in society. It doesn't treat prescription drug use, alcohol, nicotine or caffeine abuse with any weight whatsoever and doesn't prepare children for the reality of having to deal with people who are on drugs.
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    All you’re teaching is that adults lack empathy towards them: Adults are intentionally victimizing the majority of students to cater to their own shallow virtue signaling.
    - busterarm 3y ago
      Everyone votes too. The government lacks empathy towards me by forcing me to have an equal vote with morons and criminals. There are scenarios in life where we're all in this together and excising people for their inconvenience isn't what's best for society. You don't just cast off disabled people into the void, for example. Unless you have a solution for where to put these problem public school kids that isn't juvenile detention, I don't want to hear it.
      - vacuity 3y ago
        I hear you. It's no good for chronically disruptive kids to be in juvie all the time, but it's also no good for them to remain in classrooms. Any amount of pay won't salve the sheer stress of attempting to teach those who won't learn. It would be great if someone could just snap their fingers and give those kids stable homes or something. Unfortunately, I suspect the solution requires efforts on multiple fronts (ample food, housing, social support, etc.) and will be expensive, difficult, and slow.
        busterarm 3y ago
        The callousness of the HN commentariat towards those who "don't behave according to the rules" is off the charts these days. We're talking about children here. They don't know how to behave like adults yet. Cutting them out of society where they fail to meet expectations is cruelty.
        civilized 3y ago
        It seems to me that you recognize one kind of cruelty but not another, forcing innocent bystanders to have their education heavily disrupted.
- afavour 3y ago
  I literally said “I agree that keeping them in general education is bad too” but I feel like you have a point you want to make irrespective of anything I’m saying so go on.
  - civilized 3y ago
    And I agree with you. It's right to recognize that there are no good options here. In such situations, it's important to consider the bad effects and victims on both sides, not fixate on one as the only morally correct one to consider.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  This is life though, that spillover doesn't disappear when you're an adult. You will always be subject to someone else's dysfunctional life unless you isolate yourself from society completely. We need to have structures that can address this behavior in a way that fosters societal integration. This "spillover" might not be a problem given proper staffing... but a 1:25 ratio is never enough to handle problems and never will be.
tivert 3y ago
> which you’re now throwing them into full time. Is that really possible in the US? IIRC, the government has a mandate to educate every child, including those that are extremely developmentally disabled (which is why special education is such a huge item in school budgets). If a kid is expelled from school, wouldn't the district be legally required to find some alternative arrangement?
- zdragnar 3y ago
  No, the parent is. Worst case, they can be home schooled. Despite being treated as such, schools are not day cares, and parents still have some responsibility for the upbringing of their children. If the kid misbehaves enough, it is on the parent.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    We might want it to work that way, but depending on which state it is, and the she of the child, the district's legal responsibilities might be what the GP wrote. In places with mandatory public education, parents suing the district for not providing education for their expelled child are likely to win.
SoftTalker 3y ago
The school cannot fix the home life, so it should not try. Home life should be addressed by child services, etc. Granted in reality they are often as understaffed or as incompetent and corrupt as any other government service, but at least that's their mission. School teachers should not be doubling as social workers.
- vacuity 3y ago
  There should be counselors to help ease the gap between school and home, but yes, teachers don't need even more burdens.
- swores 3y ago
  I personally suspect that it would work better if schools had dedicated staff to deal with that side of stuff rather than only having those people in the separate child services organisation - maybe in such a way that it's the school social care team who directly work with the children & families (with a separate team at child services to do the same for any kids not attached to a school), while being able to call on support from central child services for either advice and guidance or for the use of an expert in a specific area when needed. But underfunding is a big problem whichever way it's structured, and I of course agree with you that it's not something you can just say "this is the responsibility of the teachers to do on top of their existing responsibilities".

boeingUH60 3y ago

And this feel-goodism causes serious long-term harm. It's better to discipline people displaying rogue behavior when they're young. This feel-goodism just pushes the consequences to when these people get old, and they end up in prison, unemployed, working dead-end jobs, or something similar...at that point no one cares because they assume the person is an adult that can take care of themselves.

vacuity 3y ago
Not to mention that behaviors become more ingrained with age.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lotsofpulp 3y ago

A Republican Congress with a Republican President in 2004 enacted the federal law that makes it difficult for public schools to expel disruptive children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEA_2004 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEA_2004 All a parent has to do is ask for an individualized education plan, IEP, and a public school will have to do a metric ton of cover your ass to be able to expel a child. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED495879.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED495879.pdf

civilized 3y ago
While much of what Bush did as President was not at all compassionate, he actually did believe in and try to practice compassionate conservatism. He made major concessions to liberal ways of thinking, some good and some not so good. A major good one was fighting AIDS in Africa. His education policies were on the not so good side.
- latency-guy2 3y ago
  > He made major concessions to liberal ways of thinking, some good and some not so good. A major good one was fighting AIDS in Africa. This is not making concessions to "liberal ways of thinking".
  - civilized 3y ago
    I think it is. Part of liberalism is seeing all people as worthy of compassion and help, even if they're not closely related to you. While the contrasting tendency in conservatism is to help people closer to / more similar to us and protect ourselves from outsiders who we do not understand, may not benefit from our help, or may even exploit us. Both of these tendencies are valid and adaptive in different situations, they're just different and at least somewhat in opposition. Do you disagree?
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      I would think a truly liberal policy would be to provide funding for the “compassionate” policies. On the other hand, federally legislating that local school taxing districts provide services costing $x and if they do not, open up local taxpayers to litigation of $y where x and y are quite large is…something else. How is a poor school district serving poorer taxpayers supposed to provide expensive IEP for every problem child and/or collect all the evidence to expel them, and at the same time provide quality education to well behaved kids?

ElevenLathe 3y ago

The problem is that it just moves the issue around. If you expel a 5th grader, they will be at SOME school for at least several more years, since that is the law. All you're doing is making life more miserable for their parents as they have to arrange transportation to increasingly far flung school districts, and for the child as they are ripped away from all their friends every year when they are sent to a new school. I don't know what the answer is, but "all children are owed a public education and in fact we'll arrest their parents if they drop out" and "public schools can kick children out" are self-evidently not compatible policies.

civilized 3y ago
> All you're doing is making life more miserable for their parents as they have to arrange transportation to increasingly far flung school districts, and for the child as they are ripped away from all their friends every year when they are sent to a new school. That's not all we're doing. We're also protecting an entire classroom of children from disruptive behavior. If it's gotten to the point where we would consider expulsion, then some of those children, or their families, likely find that disruption so intolerable that they themselves would need to arrange transportation to far flung school districts. That's why so many underprivileged families are desperate to get their kids into charter schools. As I keep trying to point out in this comment tree, people seem to have learned that it's morally appropriate to talk about only one type of victim here. I don't agree. I think it's morally necessary to always discuss both the disruptive child and the classroom they are disrupting, always in the same breath.
- ElevenLathe 3y ago
  If we suppose that this theoretical child is a problem that is disrupting their classroom, then we are not saving any children from that disruption, merely spreading it around. They will be a problem for one classroom this year, a different one next year, and so on. Assuming class sizes are the same, we will have on average the same number of disrupted-pupil-hours with the expulsions as without them, just a different distribution. If you want to argue it's a better distribution, or that there is some reason to believe expulsions will push "problem children" to smaller classrooms on average, then fine, but absent those arguments it's very clearly worse for the student and their parents but not better for anyone else (or rather, it's maybe better for specific other people, but also worse for yet other ones, and on average no better for anyone).

specialist 3y ago

Was the disruptive student. Am now very leftist. Some aspects do give me pause. Such as Any regiment which makes things worse. We're all just guessing; people need to be empowered, so hopefully they can muddle thru things. Thresholds need to be obvious and ruthlessly enforced. Not fuzzy and optional. (eg If a student assaults a teacher, insta removal, to never come back. And so forth.) Alas, forging these kinds of rulesets, and then sticking to them at scale, is all but impossible. Also, most people blathering about public education are repeatedly proven worse than wrong. (Including me.) So am deepyly skeptical of fixes and silver bullets. I insist there's at least some existence proof before supporting any reforms.