Thursday, January 7, 2016
Atlantic Philanthropies Writes About Philanthropy’s Role in Promoting Positive Approaches to School Discipline
Last year, at the beginning of ninth grade, my son's friend Emmanuel was suspended from school for bringing a brick to class. Emmanuel had found the brick in the schoolyard, and with the satirical wit of a 14-year-old, named it "Softie" and placed it in a prominent position on his desk. Of course, bricks are not soft, and Emmanuel's display of irony got a laugh from his classmates as they settled into the lesson of the day. But a routine classroom visit by the school dean led to a trip to the principal's office, and thus began the trajectory to suspension when a warning would have sufficed.
The award-winning actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith often poses the question: Whatever happened to mischief?* Indeed. Over the past 30 years, growing numbers of children and youth have been excluded from school for disciplinary reasons. Today, nearly 3.5 million schoolchildren nationally are suspended from school every year. Put in perspective, 1 in 14 public school students is sent home for increasingly minor offenses, often without supervision at home or the supports necessary to reenter school successfully. . .