Saturday, April 18, 2020

Should These Students Get To Graduate?

For a decade and a half on this blog, I've been consistent in the belief that schools should not punish students for behavior that takes place off-campus or outside of school activities.  It doesn't matter to me how egregious the behavior is, it's not the school's place to police it.  There are enough problems at school to handle, don't bring on additional ones.

Not everyone agrees with that:
Two Carrollton High School seniors were expelled Friday and won’t be allowed to graduate after a racist video they posted online went viral.

In a statement, Carrollton City Schools Superintendent Mark Albertus said the students’ behavior was unacceptable and “not representative of the district’s respect for all people.”

“The racist behavior observed in the video easily violates this standard,” he said. “They are no longer students at Carrollton High School.”
Neither the students nor the district look good in this story. The adults, at least, should know better.

2 comments:

ObieJuan said...

Now ask yourself this, "What if these students had said similar things, along with a few choice curse words, while walking the halls on campus, but without any video evidence?"

They'd probably still be enrolled and on tract to graduate.

If school board members had any courage, they'd stand outside classrooms on any public high school campus and observe the "unacceptable" behavior, language, and dress-code violations, that students routinely get away with and worn-down on-campus educators now just ignore.

Perhaps, we "worn-down" educators should just post all unacceptable behavior on Tic-Toc?
I know, I know.....student privacy laws.

The other thing I'd like to do is address the school board at a meeting and sprinkle in quite a few f-words, and then say, "What, I thought this was now acceptable! Haven't you been on our campus?"

Darren said...

Good points.