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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

Suspensions are dumb, in general. My high-school got rid of them in favor of an "in-school suspension" policy, wherein the student still had to go to class but was banned from after school activities and had to essentially work for the school doing e.g. grounds keeping and other tasks. The policy was effective, and got at the problem: students hanging out with the wrong crowds with too much idle time. I'm sympathetic to the argument that problem-students can be disruptive to the learning environment (though my sister is a teacher and disagrees, and is flatly in favor of outright suspensions) but I'm of the opinion that there's better ways to deal with that than telling them to sit at home and do nothing, creating more idle time and more chances to start trouble.

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I kind of agree with you. I went to school with latchkey kids and some were disruptive and distracted the class (some threatened pupils as well as got into fights off-campus). Some kids would get suspended and some expelled.

I think suspensions and expulsions should remain options but last resort and before we get there opt for other kinds of activities which could change their behavior. It'd be interesting to see if those tactics work or if they become "badges of honor" rather than disincentives.

I think most of high school is a case study in self selection. If you select yourself into a high performing group early on you’re golden, and the social pressures become such that you want to do well at academics, sports etc. If you don’t you’re basically screwed, and it’s extremely hard to select out of those bad groups because of the same types of social pressure. Policies should be aimed at interrupting and directing these selection mechanisms toward positive ends. I don’t have kids yet but this is something I’m paying a lot of attention to for eventually selecting a school for my kids - and all of this is, again, just an extension of the same selection pressures.

This is not to mention that suspension can be considered a reward for the especially problematic students because then they're going to just go off and do whatever they want.

That said, this bill isn't banning suspensions entirely for violent or bullying behavior. They just can't suspend students for willful defiance, which as the stats showed has some clear racial bias associated with it.

The "had to essentially work for the school doing e.g. grounds keeping and other tasks" seems problematic.

Why? Genuinely asking. That seems like a proportional punishment to me, and certainly better than “detention” or whatever.

Forced labor of any sort just seems tricky especially when there is a racial disparity among those so penalized. Prison work programs also seem like a good idea ("teach a trade" etc.) but then they are couched as essentially slave labor and they sound less good.

I’m not sure why there’s a racial component to this. I’m merely talking about a proportional response to disrupting class. Is your view that this punishment would be unfairly leveraged against certain races?

I’m also unconvinced that prison work is bad. Should they just hang out and do nothing? When tied to a shortened sentence, prison work seems just fine.

I think prison labor's impact on the larger labor economy should also be considered, as should the financial incentives for longer prison terms it may create. I doubt either of these are insurmountable problems, but are arguably problems with the current implementation of the system.

In the case of public schools using child labor for discipline one possible problem is that the children, if they were actually effective laborers, might tempt a school district to suspend more children to get more work done around the school, and possibly even reduce the number of maintenance workers they hire. You'd want such a system strictly regulated and audited to ensure this sort of thing doesn't happen.

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