Righteous Smiting
Of scofflaw honors students continues amid growing honors disciplinary crisis. Boston Herald:
A 16-year-old Lawrence girl sweated out an in-school suspension yesterday for succumbing to her shivers and donning a sweater violating a dress code.
In a show of sweater solidarity, Flormarie Figueroa’s mom served the suspension along with her honor-roll student and had some harsh words for cold administrators.
“How can you punish a child for being cold?” asked Marie Figueroa.
Administrators at the Business Management and Finance High School in Lawrence said the teen’s outfit - a heather-gray sweater over her uniform - was a sign of “insubordination” despite the drafty classes.
The school’s uniform policy requires that students wear short-sleeved charcoal-gray collared shirts, khaki pants and black shoes.
Maintaining discipline and high expectations is always important. Especially in a school district where getting kids to actually show up for school is a significant issue. What was this insubordinate honors student thinking?
Figueroa thought nothing would be wrong with wearing a matching sweater in order to stay warm.
“I would have understood (the punishment) if I had bad behavior, or if I disrespected someone,” said Figueroa, who said she was confronted by security and asked to leave by the school’s administrators on Wednesday.
She thought there would be nothing wrong. You can judge the disruptive nature of the offending sweater for yourself:
Meanwhile, in another part of the blackboard jungle, craven school administrators cave under pressure in the honors student Skittles scandal.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:59 am on Friday, March 14, 2008
4 Responses to “Righteous Smiting”
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March 14th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Discipline is important, but it’s supposed to improve self-esteem by emphasizing positive behavior, not tearing down people for minor infractions. This over-reaction to minutia is evidence of a system out of control.
The punishment needs to fit the crime. Whatever happened to issuing demerits? Or is that too much paperwork for the professional educators?
March 14th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
“First, God created idiots. This was for practice. He then created school boards.”
– Mark Twain
It’s not a new problem.
March 14th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
[...] an honors student in Massachusetts was suspended for wearing a sweater over her uniform shirt. She was cold. Her high school suspends 50 to 60 students a week in [...]
March 14th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
The simplest thing to do would have been for the school to issue guidelines for school uniform sweaters, instead of trying to make an example of the girl. Which kind of tells you something about the quality of schoolteachers and administrators these days.
Yes, I am biased, a consequence of many years of having to hand master’s degrees to people in the College of Education who should not even have been allowed in a classroom, let alone receive a master’s degree.