| I agree that banning bathroom breaks is stupid. But it's not as easy as "punishing disruption" a. Because turns out the constantly suspending students is actually not that effective if our goal is to educate those students b. Because suspending students goes on a school's record and the central office in urban areas wants to keep suspensions low. c. Because the way they punish the disruption is oftentimes more problematic for ordinary students ie. My school implemented hall sweeps where all of the teachers would lock the doors to their classroom and security would come through the halls and collect students for detention, but it would oftentimes catch students who were doing things like going from their classroom to the library or something. It was also pretty clearly racially biased. I remember vividly a black student arriving maybe 10 seconds after the bell for class, getting into the class, and having security guards come into the classroom to take her out of the class because she was late. The security guards knew that the affluent, white student's parents were more likely to throw a fit if their child was treated like that. This was honestly the most valuable lesson from that school: well-meaning discussion about how to enforce/stop certain behavior in a meeting translates into super unreasonable enforcement actions by school security. I doubt this principle is unique to schools, but I am lucky to be wealthy enough to be shielded from the brunt of the law. |