blogs_blog_1719

In my experience, people who hate school just skip class.

Though I do agree that out-of-school suspension is an odd way of "punishing" someone.

Many bullies are often going through issues at home, such as parents divorcing, abuse, family crisis, poverty, etc., leaving them in an unstable emotional state. School is sometimes is their only escape from a dire situation. They don't want to be suspended, but they end up lashing out at others due to their home situation.

 

Remember, hurt people hurt people.

 

-Nukaya

Maybe the staff should discuss what's going on at home before deciding to suspend?

However, you generalized in your original post, saying:

 

"The bullies who get suspended HATE school. They don't want to be there. Therefore, they WANT to be suspended. They see it as a REWARD. And what better a way to get that 'reward' than to torture an innocent fellow student?"

 

The majority of bullies do not hate school, and in fact want to be there learning, and are lashing out due to other circumstances. While yes, some schools will take or attempt to take what is going on in a student's home life into consideration, that should not instantly become a reason not to suspend a student.

 

Doing so also starts to tread in murky waters, depending on the situation. Imagine a teacher having to tell a parent that their son or daughter's bully would not be serving any sort of suspension or punishment because they were reacting in anger by hitting and injuring others due to a problem at home. Parents, more often than not, want to see some sort of action taken against the bully, if not out of defense for their own child. In the everyday world, if a person were to go out, attack someone, and then say "Oh, I was having a bad day", they would still end up in jail, and still end up serving a punishment.

 

-Nukaya

Well, most of the bullies I've had to deal with hate school. I remember one even had it written on his pencil case!

 

Plus, there are other punishments out there, like detention and in-school suspensions (the suspensions I was referring to were out-of-school suspensions).

 

I actually discussed this on another forum, and someone there gave us a pdf regarding the debate of in-school vs. out-of-school suspensions: http://www.publications.villanova.edu/Concept/2004/Effective_Discipline.pdf