A little rant about the state of our school system.

Yesterday I was woken up by a call from my child's school informing me that she had refused to do her work and caused a disturbance in class. This resulted in her being suspended from school for the rest of the day and the following day. 

Here's my issue: The child did not want to be in school and was refusing to do her work. They sent her HOME? So, what does this teach her? That if you make a big enough fuss you can get out of your responsibilities?


I don't think there should be out of school suspension. You're basically giving a kid who is misbehaving to get out of doing school work a one to three day vacation from the very thing they don't want to do. 

Why not just let the child attend school for the day but instead of sitting and doing boring old classwork they get to pick up trash, clean toilets or help out in the cafeteria for the day? Teach them that without education they will have to settle for manual labor or really practice the phrase "Do you want fries with that?" Oh, and then there's the matter of the school work. While serving an out of school suspension any work missed is not able to be made up. This includes any tests that the child may have missed on their mini vacation. So, wait, these kids don't want to do the work anyway, that's why they act out, so they get a vacation and don't have to do the work?


I remember when I was in school kids would get paddled for misbehaving. There was no out of school suspension and if you didn't want to cooperate in class you were given a work detail instead. Kids were also terrified of what would happen to them when they got home from school if they received one of these work details or worse, an after-school detention. Kids today don't have that fear because parents are now afraid to lay a hand on their kids for fear of DSS/DCF showing up at their front door with accusations of child abuse. 

My child upon receiving her suspension then gets an attitude with me because she knows she's in trouble. This results in hours of her screeching like she's being chased by some crazed serial killer, beating on her bedroom door until there is a six to seven inch hole all the way through it and then proceeding to throw all of her bed linens out of her second story bedroom window in an attempt to break her fall as she had decided to jump out of it to get out of the house. 

I just don't know what to do. Neither her father nor I have the money available to send her to private school. I really think that a military type school would really do her some good, but those are extremely expensive. There are other children in the equation as well.  I don't think it fair to take money away from their upbringing in order to handle a child who simply refuses to do anything that is required of everyone else. 



Well, I guess we'll figure something out.


Many random returns!