California will put into effect new rules, beginning July 1, 2020, and running for five years, that will prohibit suspensions from school for willful defiance, from kindergarten through eighth grade, and expulsions, but not suspensions, for grades nine-12. The legislation, SB 419, introduced by State Senator Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Berkeley, is intended to address a form of institutionalized racism that disproportionately affects black students, primarily black males, and contributes perpetuation of what is known as “the school-to-prison pipeline.”
According to studies by the Black Minds Project, a joint initiative of San Diego State University and UCLA, “While 3.6 percent of all students were suspended in 2016-2017, the suspension rate for black boys and young men was 12.8 percent.” The studies also conclude that “the highest disparity by grade level occurs in early childhood education (grades K through three) where black boys are 5.6 times more likely to be suspended than the state average.”
The legislation grows out of the restorative justice (RJ) movement that maintains there are far more effective ways to deal with misbehavior, such as willful defiance, than exclusionary punishment. Bedrock principles of the RJ movement are that crime causes harm and justice should focus on repairing that harm and the people most affected by the crime should be able to participate in its resolution. Thus, RJ shifts the focus of discipline from punishment to learning and from the individual to the community, in this case the school environment.
According to the George Lucas Educational Foundation, “Zero-tolerance policies may seem like the answer to bad behavior in the heat of the moment … Instead of trying to make things right, it responds to the original harm with an additional harm … fails to prevent recurrence … in fact, it makes our schools neither safer nor smarter, and has a disproportionately negative impact on students of color.”
As a product of Catholic school education, where discipline involved corporal punishment and actual physical abuse, there is little doubt in my mind that mistreatment is not an effective antidote to misbehavior. Were we really better off being denied the right to question what was going on around us until we broke out of educational prison? And how many youngsters would succumb to the notion that not to rebel, question or explore important issues was preferable to confronting them? How many individuals would be physically and mentally scarred in the process of denying them the right to question authority?
The cultural revolution of the 1960s was mind expanding in many ways, and it was only a matter of time before the hypocrisy of our leaders and institutions would be unmasked under intense scrutiny and questioning. Many still believed, as I did and do, that questioning authority, or willful defiance, can be done in a way that does not disrupt society or our cultural environment. It can be annoying, it can be unpleasant and it can encourage one to change their preconceived notions about certain things. However, it can result in change that is good for society to progress on key moral issues such as discrimination, civil liberties and equal opportunity that represent the bedrock foundation of our democracy.
The popular refrain that would eventually be ridiculed and that I am sure even today is often used by parents when asked, “Why?” is, “Because I said so.” I never believed that this retort was sufficiently responsive or respectful, even when I was a single parent raising two young sons.
Similarly, the lack of civil discourse that characterizes and exacerbates a yawning divisiveness in today’s society is indicative of a pervasive inability to reason and reasonably disagree with one another. We have seemingly lost our ability to reach an accommodation and compromise in order to fulfill our higher responsibilities: namely, a better world for all. Is restorative justice a guarantee that we can resolve these problems? Of course not, but it is incumbent upon us to explore options that carry some evidential heft rather than succumb to what is a failed and failing policy currently in effect.
More than 50 years ago, a Presidential Commission on Civil Disorders, commonly known as the Kerner Commission, released a seminal report on race that is as instructive today as it was then. In response to the riots that affected cities across the country it concluded that “America was moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” Has much changed? I would argue, no.
So, with regard to the issue at hand, I believe it represents a microcosm of a much larger problem that puts constraints upon dialogue and debate. Zero-tolerance represents a failure to effectively deal with problems as it does not take into consideration the complexities and differences that underlie most serious issues. We owe it to ourselves, and to our kids, to at least give it a try.