Anti-Suspension NIMBYism: These Policies Are Only Good Enough for Other People's Kids

Should kids be able to get suspended from school for willful defiance?

The Hetchinger Report published a second article this week against suspension and this one really threw me for a loop because it's specifically about how LAUSD and now all of California has banned suspensions for willful defiance and like to a certain extent i get it because any adult can trigger a power struggle with a student and then make that student defiant kind of on command right like there's there's no reason to get into a power struggle with a student unnecessarily but sometimes we do need kids to listen like this article that came out just now from the hetchinger report talks about a kid who would not go to class student who just refused to go to class and five different adults had to speak to the kid the science teacher a campus aide a restorative justice coordinator and then the principal kid would still not go to class after all four of those adults said to go to class and it wasn't until the basketball coach came by that the kid finally went to class and like it's great that the basketball coach had that relationship but it's not great that that was what it took to get the kid to go to class it's not great that we have schools where Kids aren't listening to the adults who are in charge.

As an adult, how can you be in charge of students if they don't listen to you and if you cannot make them listen to you and do something about it when they don't?

This is physically unsafe.

This is not a situation that I would put my kid in.

This is not a situation that I would want to work in.

And if you look at the people who are quoted in this article, Again, not a single administrator is quoted in this article.

There are several activists who are quoted.

One teacher who's quoted and shares a lot about what's not working about this restorative justice approach and kids not listening because they can't get suspended for willful defiance.

If you look at all these...

supposed experts but really advocates against suspension these these kind of activists who are opposed to suspension none of their kids go to this school in fact none of their kids go to any la schools and it's kind of like educational nimbyism let me know if you can think of a better term for this but like nimbyism is that the idea of not in my backyard right like oh i want there to be lots of affordable housing but i don't want it in my backyard We have the same kind of thing going on in education where lots of people have opinions for how other people's kids should be educated, but their own kids are magically exempt from those opinions, right?

Like their own kids are going to very traditional schools with very traditional rules and high expectations and strict deadlines and all the things that have always made students learn.

And somehow low expectations are fine for other people's kids.

Like, oh, I can feel sorry for other people's kids and not hold them to high standards and not have safe, orderly schools for them because why?

It's just hypocrisy, right?

And I talked to you the other day about Joe Bowler's policy of not allowing middle school students to take algebra, even if they were ready, and delaying algebra until high school, while at the same time sending her own kids to a $48,000 a year private school, where guess what?

They got to take algebra in middle school.

So this elite hypocrisy and this educational nimbyism, I think, can be found in almost any terrible policy.

The people pushing...

for almost any one of these terrible policies, are almost never willing to put their own children on the line.

And I think that tells us something.

So take a look at this article and let me know what you think.

And let me know if you have a better term for educational nimbyism.