Is Suspension Compassionate? Is It Compassionate to Teach That Violence Is OK?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder flips the compassion argument — arguing that allowing violence to go unchecked is far less compassionate than suspending the student responsible.
Key Takeaways
- The real lack of compassion is tolerating violence - Keeping violent students in school without consequences sends the message that violence is acceptable
- Suspension protects victims - Compassion for the school community means removing threats to safety
- Reframe the question - Instead of asking if suspension is compassionate, ask if tolerating violence is compassionate
Transcript
All right, so what about compassion for students who are struggling with their behavior, especially who are acting out violently?
This comment said kids aren't emotionally, you know, fully emotionally formed.
What about compassion?
And I think in order to answer a question about compassion, we have to think about what is actually in the student's best interest, not just what feels the nicest to me.
And I get that for educators, for people who care about kids, discipline makes us uncomfortable.
We do not want to have to think about this kind of stuff, but we have to, if we're going to make the right decision about what is best for the student and the student is going to have to live in the real world, right?
Like we can't just create this bubble for them in the classroom where we tolerate any old behavior, including violence and just say, it's okay.
As long as you have calmed down, you can come back immediately.
Um, if we teach that lesson, I think there are very real consequences in the student's real life.
And we can expect that when that student is at the park on Saturday, if they act the same way they act at school, when they are able to just hurt people and get away with it and come right back to class, that student is actually going to be in danger by acting that way.
And if we're teaching, if we're reinforcing that it's okay to hurt people and just act like it's fine.
Then we're, we're teaching them a lesson that is a maladaptive life lesson.
Like they cannot live safely if, if they're experiencing and being kind of reinforced for hurting people and getting away with it.
So I think there has to be some sort of consequence and some, because we don't have you know, eye for an eye consequences.
Like if you punch somebody, we're going to punch you.
No, we don't do that kind of thing.
We have to have something that signals that it's not okay.
And it shouldn't be punitive.
It shouldn't actually hurt the student, shouldn't harm them.
And I think as a healthy boundary, exclusionary discipline is probably the best thing we can come up with now.
Like, would I like to have something that has absolutely no negative repercussions for the student and only helps them?
Yes, but I don't know what that would be.
And I think we have a lot of ideas about like teaching and, desired behaviors or replacement behaviors.
But I don't think this is really a teaching task because the student knows that hitting is wrong.
It's not new information to them that hitting is wrong or that punching somebody is wrong.
So I think there has to be an experienced consequence of a lost opportunity to continue to engage in that kind of behavior.
And I think that's why it's always going to be necessary to remove students for a period of time from the classroom, not just let them calm down and come back 15 minutes later with a candy bar, but to actually go home and think about what they've done.
And we say, well, they're not going to think about what they've done.
They're just going to play video games.
Well, maybe so, but they are not going to have the opportunity to continue to hurt people until there has been a little bit of a time for a reset.
So I don't think we can get away from exclusionary discipline, and I don't think it's bad for kids.
I think it's bad not to do something like that.
Let me know what you think.