Zero-Tolerance in K-12 Discipline and National Merit
Reflections on the "Reflections from Distinguished Faculty 2022" UMB public lecture, 12/6/2022
Wait, what, I missed the research award talk?! Did I? He keeps saying, “I am white, I am male, I apologize, I hold myself accountable.” It must be the service talk, not the research talk! I am late! …No, it’s ok. It IS the research talk, “community-engaged” one, but research nonetheless. Phew. These days it’s so hard to tell, everything looks and sounds like October 1917… or July.
Excuse me, what was the speaker talking about? What, discipline in public schools? “Abolish suspensions for willful defiance1” he said? Ah, that’s why students misbehave, because of the disciplinary regulations! Exactly as “St. Kendi” teaches: racial disparities are caused by their own symptoms. College admission disparities are caused by the racist SATs. College graduation disparities, by the oppressively hard white classes. That’s logic. Obviously, the school suspension racial disparities result from the racially discriminatory school rules. Never look any further, into the root causes: you may find no government funding for poor schools and you may, god forbid, be tempted to think THIS is the true reason… but when it comes to “fiscal” we don’t want to come off as “conservative”, do we? Have you ever heard of a “fiscally progressive”?
Abolishing suspensions for “willful defiance” of school discipline sounds like abolishing grades in school assessments. But… hiding the National Merit Awards from Asians has no disciplinary parallel, yet. Maybe we should start giving Asians random suspensions. Viva the equity!
This Wikipedia article, on Zero-tolerance policies in schools, is marked with “tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone.” Tellingly, the (very short) section about proponents of the zero-tolerance policy cites opponents only.