We Need to Expel More Students Who Are Violent Toward Women and Children

We are going to have to start expelling more students for being violent at school and for bringing guns to school.

There's a big report in the Washington Post this week about the huge increase in the number of guns that are being brought to school.

And as always, students have to be expelled if they bring a gun.

It's a federal law.

I think every state has laws to that effect.

that you just can't come to school if you're gonna bring a gun.

It's as simple as that.

When it comes to violence, we don't necessarily need zero tolerance.

We do need a progressive discipline policy that says there are escalating consequences.

If you are violent to other people, you continue to be violent to other people, there are going to be increasing consequences up to and including expulsion and arrest.

And I think that's really the only way we can keep people safe.

And we have to remember that it's not just about what's happening right now.

It is about what happens later on in life, right?

If we have kids who are violent all through school and they get away with it, they don't have a consequence.

They don't have a boundary put in place to protect them from hurting other people and to protect other people from being hurt by them.

Well, young people grow up, young people become adults and people who are abusive to others in schools become abusive to the adults and the others around them as adults.

And it is not lost on me that almost all of the violence that happens in schools happens against children, right?

Like if a student assaults other students, they're assaulting children and against their female educators, right?

Now, if you've been in assaulted and you're a male educator you know leave a comment let me know but it's really my sense that almost all of the violence against educators is against women and that is not irrelevant to this discussion and to what we need to do about it and i had lots of male colleagues when i was a middle school teacher and a lot of them would say to students hey try me and the students knew that there were some very good and immediate reasons they should not try their male teachers and i get the sense now that so many students have this sense of impunity especially around assaulting female teachers and other educators like paras that it's just happening more and more there are no consequences and it's just out of control so i think we really need to have it as an expectation that you know we'll follow progressive discipline but it is highly likely that if someone is just repeatedly violent to students and staff members, they're going to be expelled because that is how you keep yourself safe in a violent situation, right?

If you were related to someone who was dating someone who was violent, you wouldn't say, you know what, you really need to attend some professional development on the safest way to date someone who's violent.

No, you would say break up Get out.

If you live with them, move out.

I will help you move out.

The only way to keep yourself safe from a violent person is to get away from them, to get them out of your life.

And when it comes to schools, the only way we can get violent students out of our lives is not through training, is not through professional development that guilts us and gaslights us into thinking that it's our fault.

The only way to make ourselves safe from violent people is to get rid of them.

And that sounds harsh.

It sounds mean to say we want to expel students.

But we have a much bigger obligation to keep everybody else safe than we do to keep that student around if they're being violent and making learning impossible for everyone else.

Let me know what you think.