Is suspension really a punishment?

Post Reply New Topic

I can understand how suspended from college (and maybe a very prestegious high school) as a a punishment, but grade school? When I was in grade school, I would purposely act up in order TO GET suspended. Sure my mom wouldn't let me watch TV and stuff and would sometimes make me work on store bought workbooks, but I didn't care. I just didn't want to be at school. Suspension was a reward to me. The school was starting to catch on that I was acting up on purpose and tried something called an "in school suspension". I was in a classroom with a "babysitter" and with the exception of the "babysitter", I was all alone. I was allowed to draw and color all day long. The classroom I was in was even quieter than my own house. I perfered quiet. Some punishment. They eventualy sent me back to my regualr classroom at the end of the schoolday. I missed my best friend at the time but she was out sick that day anyway. I was allowed to draw and color all day long. I didn't find that very punishing either. The school year was almost over anyway and my parents pulled me out to homeschool me the next school year and ever since, but if they had kept me in school, I think I would have started to act up in order to get "inschool suspensions". I had a severe phobia of being left behind and an after school "detention" would have just been anxiety provoking. Either they didn't do detentions at young grades at that school, or my parents had something about it in my IEP. Anyway, are suspensions really intended as a punishment for younger grades?

Perhaps not so much a punishment but more a blessing for the classmates and teacher of anyone consistently and deliberately disruptive.

Yes, for the parents! It is also to get disruptive kids out of the class, so that the teacher can get back to teaching the other students.

I think in school after hours detention is more effective. Who wants to get stuck spending more time there.

I've never been suspended but I imagine it would not be a punishment at all, I might have had my mum scream at me psychotically for an hour but after that I'd be at home for a couple of days, woooo! I've been put in isolation before in high school and that wasn't a punishment, I was in some small room with 2 other pupils and a teaching assistant and they just chatted while I listened. I was put in isolation/in school suspension because I wore shoes with a faint white grid pattern on them and two slogan badges on my blazer, my old school were extremely anal about uniform. For a while people would get sent home because they wore patterned socks under their trousers, that sort of thing ended though eventually. I highly doubt having a patch of colour on your socks was going to blow up the school.

Bahaha. The parents are the ones punished with suspensions. Unless they're parents who don't care/aren't around...

At my school there are a lot of people who purposely get suspended to leave school. Its nice not having thrm there. A lot of people dont get the on purpose, but dont care when they do also. What I really think is odd is when someone is suspended for not going to school. Whats the point of that?

When I was in school, they had an "in-school suspension", where the suspended would spend the whole day is an isolated room in the school rather than attend classes.

When I was in school I loved being suspended. I only remember it happening twice though. I hated school so much.

3 days paid vacation.

Now... In School suspension was punishment.

Yeah we had that too. That was true punishment. We had to sit in the lobby of the Vice-Principal's office. Just a small room, few chairs against the wall. Always a couple of other reprobates there. All day. Not fun. Not fun at all.

it depends on how the school and your parents are .

I got suspended (for the first time ever) yesterday for fighting back a random bully I don't even know. In my school, even fighting in self defense can get you suspended, but fortunately it is always shorter than the jack*ss who started and it's always out of site suspension.

I thought mom was gonna be mad at me for getting suspended (never been before, but almost got there, twice). Nope. Because I didn't start the fight, just end it, mom told me that everything would be okay and would even let me play my Xbox 360 during my suspension. If I started the fight though, she would make me do alot of chores and no TV.

Depending on what led to suspension, it may range from grueling punishment to a much needed 1-5 day vacation.

Out of school suspensions, while sometimes necessary perhaps for sever incidents, are generally ineffective, especially for minor infractions. Given that in most families, both parents work now, suspended kids often just get an unsupervised day at home - especially when you factor in how many of those kids are coming from single-parent families. Also factor in that, in general, it is unfortunately true that kids from low-income backgrounds get suspended more often, and now the kids being kept out of school are the ones whose families can't afford to make arrangements for someone to look after the kid that's being kept out of school.

In-school suspensions are generally better, although that can vary on exactly what the school does with the students that are suspended. However, even these are problematic if they are overused.

In case like yours, Meerkat, the school was defaulting to their usual punishment schemes for acting out, rather than digging deeper to find the real issue and coming up with something suited to that. So, my answer to your question would be that they are indeed meant as punishment, however your case was a textbook example of misuse of the punishment. As brickmack pointed out, punishing someone who doesn't want to be in school by keeping them out of school is utterly absurd and counter-productive. The reason for it is pure laziness - of all the possible responses to misbehaviour that exist, suspension requires by far the least amount of effort on the part of the teachers/principals of the school.

For my brother it sure wasn't a punishment.
He got caught smoking weed just outside school. The school expelled him, but the judge said it was too big of a punishment and he should be allowed to make the final exams. Since this happened three months before his finals.
So he got 3 months vacation from school while the rest off the school was still in class. And than he succeeded his exams.
I wish I got caught smoking weed back in high school

In striking irony I received three suspensions from my school during my time there, two for leaving the room to seek sanctuary in the library when the entire class (teachers included) united in mocking me, and one for deliberate non attendance over a period of days (truanting).
I thoroughly enjoyed my time in suspension, as it granted me peace from the incessant bullying and allowed me to play on my computer all day

In conclusion I would suggest that suspension in itself is not a punishment.

yes it is. Suspensions is a punishment in school that kick you out from school for a couple of days, or even put you in the detention, which that is called. "In-School Suspension.

Your being to literal.

Is it really a punishment to get 3 days off school to stay at home (our standard suspension was 3 days) when your allowed to make up the work?