#109. School Discipline

It has long been the goal of Crusading White Pedagogues to instill discipline in their pupils and to bridge the racial gap in achievement between white and black students. Neither of these goals appears anywhere close to fruition.

One of the main problems in working with Black students is the high rates of disciplinary problems that inhibit the teacher’s ability to actively engage young minds:

Some 15 percent of the nation’s black students in grades K-12 are suspended at least briefly each year, compared with 4.8 percent of white students, according to federal data from 2006, the latest available. Expulsions are meted out to one in 200 black students versus one in 1,000 white students.

Zero tolerance and the quick resort to suspensions have been politically popular, but education leaders are having second thoughts. “If our primary obligation is to educate kids, then to punish them by excluding them doesn’t make sense,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators.

You see, school discipline is innately racist as it disproportionately affects Black students at rates considerably higher than all other pupils.

Sadly, every state with a Black person in it appears to follow the same pattern of Black student aggression and thus, expulsion from school:

In the average New Jersey public school, African-American students are almost 60 times as likely as white students to be expelled for serious disciplinary infractions.

In Minnesota, black students are suspended 6 times as often as whites.

In Iowa, blacks make up just 5 percent of the statewide public school enrollment but account for 22 percent of the students who get suspended.

Fifty years after federal troops escorted nine black students through the doors of an all-white high school in Little Rock, Ark., in a landmark school integration struggle, America's public schools remain as unequal as they have ever been when measured in terms of disciplinary sanctions such as suspensions and expulsions, according to little-noticed data collected by the U.S. Department of Education for the 2004-2005 school year.

In every state but Idaho, a Tribune analysis of the data shows, black students are being suspended in numbers greater than would be expected from their proportion of the student population. In 21 states—Illinois among them—that disproportionality is so pronounced that the percentage of black suspensions is more than double their percentage of the student body. And on average across the nation, black students are suspended and expelled at nearly three times the rate of white students.

In Seattle, a comprehensive investigation into why Black children are frequently delinquent in their behavior and recipients of lengthy expulsions from school, revealing some incredibly unpleasant truths that will haunt every Disingenuous White Liberal henceforth:

Plenty of people say poverty is the real reason black students in the Seattle Public Schools are 2.6 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than other students. It isn't.

Plenty of people blame the race-based discipline gap on broken homes in the black community. They're wrong, too.

Black students -- regardless of their home lives -- are simply far more likely than others to be suspended or expelled, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer found in a two-month investigation.

A school culture that prides itself on being color-blind, the P-I found, might be better off taking a hard look at race.

No matter the state, no matter the geographic region of the country and no matter the socio-economic background of the family, the common denominator that threads together this unpleasant national image is that Black people everywhere are difficulty to discipline and engaging in misbehavior at an unprecedented scale.

An impressive study of Black students being disobedient at alarming scales can be found here.

Sadly, the only way to deal with students who misbehave is to permanently eject them from school, so that those who care to learn will not be held down by miscreants incapable of anything resembling education but mere poster children for the juvenile delinquents.

If the United States wanted to truly compete with other industrial nations and maintain its status as a 1^st World power well into the 21^st century, rationale decisions regarding school discipline must be enacted so that those capable of producing in advanced mathematics, the hard sciences and fields that require great patience and intelligence can be taught in an environment free of juvenile delinquents and the unruly.

Or, if we want to be a nation of mere diversity officers, employees and enforces, we can regard these unfortunate findings as a mere coincidence and power through with the McDonald’s line of good corporate governance. Recently, that company which strives to be 365 Black published a book on its diversity initiative entitled None of Us is as Good as All of US: How McDonald’s Prospers by Embracing Inclusion and Diversity.

The rate the United States is going under Black Run America (BRA), we have chosen the latter path.

However, another path exists. Recently, a Black teacher in Texas engaged an unruly student in a most shocking manner. She beat the student senseless:

When their teacher backed one of their classmates into a corner, students at a Houston-area charter school thought it was a joke - but it allegedly turned into a shocking and brutal beating that was caught on tape.

Sherri Davis, a science teacher at Jamie's House Charter School, allegedly backed 13-year-old Isaiah Johnson into a corner and began beating him while his classmates watched.

At the beginning of the video you can hear the laughter and applause from the students as Isaiah is backed into a corner by Davis after Isaiah reportedly teased a female classmate. But Janiqua Johnson, a student who shot the video on her cell phone, says Davis "snapped" and started beating the 13-year-old, according to CBS affiliate KHOU.

The teacher "just started beating him up," Janiqua Johnson told KHOU. "His behavior may have been bad but he didn't deserve that," Johnson said, referring to the teasing that preceded the alleged beating.

Davis was placed on administrative leave when school officials learned of the incident in late April, but was fired Monday when officials saw the video.

"It was horrifying," said Sue Jones, spokesperson for the school. "There's just no other word for that."

Janiqua Johnson and other witnesses told KHOU that four or five school employees were present in the classroom. The students claimed they felt intimidated by some teachers after the video became public.

The school is looking into allegations that other teachers watched the beat-down without stepping in, according to a school spokesperson, and said that it will punish any teachers found to have done that.

The Harris County Sheriff's Department is also investigating the incident, although a spokesperson declined to comment further.

There is no way to discipline Black students in schools, is the obvious answer. To discipline Black students is to disrupt their natural energy and vitality that can only be extinguished through sports. The classroom is a grave distraction to Black children as learning impedes other activities that would be of greater benefit to them in the long run.

When educating Black children the only goal is to apparently slow down the steadily increasing rate of disciplinary problems that plague that the Black community.

National Public Radio (NPR) did a series on Black students inability to refrain from situations that warrant expulsion and came to DWL conclusions. The only situation in SBPDL’s opinion is the Michael Oher Act at this point, but that will not be enacted.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes staying out of trouble in school, as Black people and school disciplinary problems are virtually synonymous nowadays.

Those white pedagogues brave enough to join Teach for America and endure majority Black schools in inner cities where the average amount of money spent per pupil far exceeds any suburban school are warned: your efforts, however noble, are misguided and wasted.

Indeed, here is a Forbes article on the best and worst school districts according the metrics of money spent per student. This information is highly quantifiable and shows some distressing information.

High achievers in academics must be placed with other high achievers and put on different educational paths than other students. To refuse to acknowledge painful realities in the preponderance of disciplinary problems that disproportionately affect Black students is to risk eradicating America as a 1^st World nation.

One school district has decided to dump those classes that white students perform better in (well, it might be proficient to just dump them all then) as science laboratories in Berkeley fail to attract the right racial mix:

Via Chris Anderson comes this rather odd news about plans for Berkeley High School to cut science labs as part of the school's measures to "address Berkeley's dismal racial achievement gap." Apparently white students at the school do "far better than the state average while black and Latino students [do] worse." Fair enough. That's something worth looking into, but taking away science labs? According to one of the people who helped put forth the proposal, "science labs were largely classes for white students." So, just do away with them? Why not explore why that is? Or see if there's something more proactive to be done about it? Of course, it's not even true that it's just white kids taking science labs:

Science teachers were understandably horrified by the proposal. "The majority of the science department believes that this major policy decision affecting the entire student body, the faculty, and the community has been made without any notification, without a hearing," said Mardi Sicular-Mertens, the senior member of Berkeley High School's science department, at last week's school board meeting.

Sincular-Mertens, who has taught science at BHS for 24 years, said the possible cuts will impact her black students as well. She says there are twelve African-American males in her AP classes and that her four environmental science classes are 17.5 percent African American and 13.9 percent Latino. "As teachers, we are greatly saddened at the thought of losing the opportunity to help all of our students master the skills they need to find satisfaction and success in their education," she told the board.

It seems like there must be more to this story than what's being reported. The concept of cutting science labs because more white students take them just seems too preposterous to make sense.

SBPDL recommends buying the McDonald’s book on diversity. It is apparent that in Black Run America, we have decided on that national trajectory. Student discipline is not encouraged, for it unfortunately punishes Black people at a higher rate than other pupils.