If they were drinking outside of school hours and property, how is this the school's business?
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If they were drinking outside of school hours and property, how is this the school's business?
People are incredibly naive if they think the pictures of them on social networking sites aren't looked into by prospective employers, especially public service positions like law enforcement, teaching, etc...
I don't like it and I happen side with the kids here, but this is a generation that will have their entire lives detailed online, by themselves no less. They'd better get used to it.
If you're going to be dumb enough to post pictures of you doing illegal stuff on a public website, then you should be punished. Plus, some of the kids suspended had signed documents saying that they would not have alcohol or what not.
This is nothing new. If photos surfaced of you partying when I was in school, you got suspended from activities and such.
They absolutely should be punished. By their parents. What happens off of school grounds is none of the school's business. It's different from a job. If the teachers or principal want to bring it to the parent's attention, that's great. I'm all for it. But to punish a student (and suspending a partying teen isn't much of a punishment, is it?), by keeping them out of school for their misdeeds out of school is nonsensical.
I was always in the mind that teachers should not be contained to school grounds only. As an educator, you have to be ready to guide these kids at all cost. I know most teachers don't see it that way, and only see it as a job, and there's nothing wrong with that... but there's also nothing wrong with trying to steer kids out of trouble. The notion that school should just be a place where they read textbooks to you is ridiculous. They don't need to be militant, but they should at least show care. I like teachers that are parental. Maybe suspension isn't the best form of punishment, but the school should not be chastised for dealing out punishment.
Or maybe I just read too much Great Teacher Onizuka. Whatever.
I agree that the kids who walked out should be suspended, and probably will, but I would have walked too. Again, it's none of the schools business what its students do outside of school property. If they feel it's their responsibility to contact the parents, that's fantastic, and the right thing to do, IMO. But punishing them at school is going beyond what should be their rights as teachers and principals.
Well, the stigma is very different in Japan (I think that's where I'm coming from with my opinion), and it's not always due to them wearing a uniform. It's more common in Japan for teachers to visit students' houses on their day off to talk to their family on how the kid is doing at school. They just don't do that here.
My biggest problem with the disciplinary action is that there's no definitive proof that the kids were drinking alcohol. Now obviously when you see teenagers with red cups dancing around, there's most likely some alcohol involved, but what if one or two of those kids chose not to drink for personal reasons and only had soda in the cup? I'd have no problem with the school alerting the parents so they can come to their own conclusions, talk to their kids and decide the proper punishment, but for a school to essentially convict every kid without any concrete proof that they did anything illegal sends a pretty shitty message IMO.
Here's an interesting tidbit of information that the local media hasn't really been forthcoming about: it would appear that 42 students provided testimony of the incident to the administrators who doled out the punishment. Now, that's not definitive proof, but it's pretty damned close.
I'm also hearing that the 13 kids who got disciplined signed a no-drinking contract with the team or whatever the hell it was they were involved with. I could be wrong, but if that's the case, then they did break school rules, and it's within the school's rights to punish them.