Comment by UltraSane
4 days ago
The “violent and disruptive” student is also a child with a right to an education.
See here's the thing. Not they don't. They forfeit that right by being violent and disruptive.
4 days ago
The “violent and disruptive” student is also a child with a right to an education.
See here's the thing. Not they don't. They forfeit that right by being violent and disruptive.
Literal children are incapable of forfeiting their rights by being "violent and disruptive", and it would be insane if they could because they can't possibly begin to understand what they'd be giving up. Clearly that right is sometimes taken from them anyway, but that's neither the fault or a failure of the child.
Often kids who get their right to education taken from them are failed by their parents and/or by the schools, but the blame cannot be placed on the child for that. Every child, excepting those with significant mental illness or intellectual limitation, can and should be successfully educated. Any educational system that is incapable of handling a child's tantrum or helping a child in crisis is a failed system.
What about the other children's right to education this being impinged by the disruptive students?
It isn't an either / or. Expelled children have to go somewhere. So you provide education / rehabilitation facilities where they hopefully manage to get their behaviour under control and can be brought back into mainstream education or stay in those institutions where they can at least get a bit of an education rather than just being left to roam the streets. Whether there's the appetite to fund that kind of institution properly is another matter.
12 replies →
> Literal children are incapable of forfeiting their rights by being "violent and disruptive"
They can. And do. We have 12-year-old "children" literally robbing stores around here.
If this happens, they should exercise their right to education from inside a locked institution.
sometimes i think im sheltered and i am but then i see stuff like this and feel good
Thank you for demonstrating the point that there are constraints and complications that are difficult to appreciate from the outside. The law generally disagrees with you.
And that really hasn't turned out very well. Letting the most disruptive students ruin the education of other students isn't fair at all to those students AND is pretty damn stupid when you consider how much tax money is spent educating those students and the harm to society from not educating them.
To be clear, I am not about to justify any sort of violence anywhere. That said...
Many violent and disruptive students were just kids with special needs. And I don't mean mental conditions or anything like that.
I mean a kid that would do WAY better if he was in a trade class doing something that motivates them, rather than being frustrated and forced to endure a rubbish secondary education, several hours crammed into a small room with other people and getting nowhere.
But of course that's more difficult to implement than a generic standardising/equalising pipeline of norm-conforming average citizen production.
I think we should focus on students already trying to be a positive influence in the school, rather than catering to the bottom quintile. After all, that is how schools got in this situation in the first place.
My point was not clear. What I'm saying is that often it would be better for a certain profile of people to not be forced to attend what in my country is mandatory secondary education, and that it would be better to put them to work on stuff they might enjoy.
But of course that would mean the system needs to contemplate individuals, instead of collectives, and the system doesn't like that.