This week's article is brought to you by Mclaughlin.com. Modernizing School Discipline in recent years, there has been growing concern over disciplinary measures taken against school age children, with many parents and community leaders criticizing the perceived harshness of new policies. The question arises are school administrators truly equipped to issue discipline, or should there be an independent arbitrator to ensure fairness and in partiality in the process? One of the key issues surrounding school discipline is the human element involved in decision making
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 4:55
So I'm listening to this and I'm reading this, and I feel like it is so off of what is reality for now, that I'm trying to understand where this interpretation has come from. But again, I think it is grounded in theory, not the everyday reality. If you got these same people to write, who write these articles to actually sub in a class for two or three days, they would see the difference completely
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 2:44
Like, there's stories all over the place and I should send links to teachers, how can I say teachers? Discussion forums and YouTube channels and that sort of thing. One of the common tropes is like, a kid will cuss out somebody in class, or a kid will threaten to shoot somebody, or a kid will fight somebody in the class. They get sent to the principal's office and they get sent right back with a snack, like a lollipop and a soda
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 4:59
But the ones who push the most, they're the ones that get seen and taken care of and addressed. And a lot of times schools, out of fear, have adopted these policies and these theories to address that. To me, it's not really for the best and all of most of the largest population of students of kids
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 1:02
And I said one thing incorrectly. I said something along that sometimes, like, kids don't want to stay in the alternative learning program. What I really was I meant to say and what the administrator who ran one of those programs said, was that a lot of times the kids don't want to leave that alternative learning program because it gives them everything they need for their education. They feel more comfortable there than they do in the general student population
T.D. McLaughlin
@TDMc · 5:00
I think that there needs to be a third party outside of teachers and administrators on one side and parents and students on the other side. Because one thing I do know about you guys, because I have enough friends that are teachers and principals and assistant principals, you guys do have conversations about children inside of the small groups inside of the school. And that's not saying that's wrong, because everybody does that at their job. I have a staff that works for me
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 4:06
And what I'm saying is if you separate them, it gives them the chance to catch up. Actually keeping them together makes it far more likely that they'll fall into the school to prison pipeline because they never get the education they need to be able to compete in the real world. They never do because they sit there and don't do nothing or they become disruptive. So again, I get your intent, but it's the exact opposite result that happens
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 4:50
The results are night and day is preparing our kids to fail just like in the workplace. Again, you have built in consequences when you are working as an adult. First of all, you can lose your pay. Secondly, something like an arbitration kind of proves my point, right?
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 2:14
It on top of it, and sorry if I go on so long, but I add things like, come on. If we really treated like the corporate world and arbitration and all that, the results for these kids would be probably more severe. Imagine if a kid got into a fight under the same standards of a corporate world, or decided to threaten somebody, to shoot them
T.D. McLaughlin
@TDMc · 3:02
Again, it wasn't a debate piece or a think piece to tell people that this is the way to go. This was something that I thought about, and I offered an alternative to what's going on because of the complaints that I've heard from parents, the complaints that I've heard from educators in the school system, in the state where I live. Again, the state where you live, the education system where you live, it may be different
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 4:45
It's really to say right now, and what I'm seeing, wherever you go, particularly in neighborhoods with people that are black, brown, Hispanic, whatever, and not even those neighborhoods, the kids are falling behind because of the lack of structure. And not only that, because they are competing with people in students, in neighborhoods that have more resources to make up for that lack of structure. I just see a situation where across the country, we fall even further behind than we had before