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John McDonald
By John McDonald
I started school in the ’60s, but never realized what a microcosm of society our school system is until I began covering education as a reporter in 1998.
Most of what’s good about us begins to emerge during our school years; our personalities, our moral characteristics, our social development, are fleshed out during our time in schools.
Then there’s the flip side. Schools may be the hallowed halls in which we create the next generation of fine upstanding citizens, but it is also where our dark side begins to emerge, the side of us that likes to drink, fight, do drugs, swear, smoke, steal, break things and play with weapons.
Look no further than the latest report on discipline from the Central Okanagan school district, which details suspensions handed out for those infractions and more.
When they’re not soaking up knowledge, run-of-the-mill bad behaviour is what our kids apparently do the most, earning short time definite suspensions for 528 students. It may be a bit of a catch-all category but the next time you see some idiot at the bar who’s acting Grade 8 drunk, he’s probably been doing it since about then. That grade accounted for 131 suspensions, almost a quarter of the total.
Fighting and doing dope seem the most popular schoolyard passions. Fisticuffs bought 265 kids a suspension kids last year, while another 226 were busted for drugs, mostly in and around Grade 10. It may seem like a lot, but by time those kids reach 30, the vast majority will have not thrown a punch in years and won’t have anything resembling a drug problem.
There is that hardcore cadre, however, that will remain violent and they are rooted in the 53 suspensions for assault and 70 for bullying the school district handed down last year.
Absenteeism, it seems, is ingrained in our psyches. Long before most of us ever landed a full-time job, we’ve already developed the habit., Skipping class (most popular in Grade 10) saw 237 suspensions meted out in 2008/09. (I’ve never understood why you would punish someone for skipping by sending them home. Maybe it’s that positive reinforcement that creates those cubicle ghosts that haunt many offices.)
Sixty theft suspensions were picked up by light-fingered students. White-collar or blue, the criminal mind clearly begins to emerge in school, with a disproportionate number of the them around Grade 8 or 9. To be fair to the lower grades, most of the categories of the school discipline stats are skewed by the fact that the real trouble makers are usually out of the system by time they reach Grade 10, usually heading for a lifetime of menial jobs and petty crime.
The school district is calling 2008/09 a good year in its discipline report, trending downward with reductions in most categories., But there’s only so much they can do and there’s no denying the dark side of our society is beginning to emerge long before our kids graduate.
john@kelowna.com
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I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of those suspensions were to boys. The current structure of the school system is NOT set up to see boys excel. One only needs to quickly do a Google search for “school system + boys” to find how the system is failing our young men. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2006/06/07/sk-boys-schools060607.html. Yes boys have a choice to make in their daily behaviours but when that young man continues to see failure after failure it does become a stage for troubled years down the road.
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Id have to disagree that the vast majority in suspentions was all boys,the girls may not be up their yet but they are every bit as ruthless and more.
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What a negative report. The last sentence of your column states, “The school district is calling 2008/09 a good year in its discipline report, trending downward with reductions in most categories.”
So why the negativity? Because it sounds more alarming and makes for a better story? This is why statistics from the general population, such as crime statistics, are reported per capita (e.g. per 100,000 people), and usually with reference to previous years (e.g. a 10% increase or a 20% drop from the year before).
So what “story” do these numbers tell? It it a story that there are teenagers getting into trouble? How about that their behaviour is improving?
Please continue discussion on the forum: link