Eric makes some good points regarding student behavior and encouraging students to stay involved regarding Libertyville’s new rule to hold students accountable for what they post on line and more generally do outside of school.
When students misbehave, they forfeit the privilege.
The problem with this ought to be obvious:
Extracurricular activities are often the salvation of “bad” kids. Youths who feel lost, alienated, tempted and angry can find their way through participation in sports, music, drama, academic teams and so on.
They can find their special talents. They can find like-minded souls; perhaps a new and more salutary peer group. They can find dedicated, interested faculty members who can keep them aimed in the right direction. They can find opportunities for college scholarships.
The thing is it isn’t an either or decision in disciplinary cases. Even in an age of no tolerance, the Unit 5 policy I linked to suspends students from the team for 1/4 of the season–probably less than a month in high school sports.
I don’t disagree that students should be allowed to participate after an infraction, but part of keeping students involved is using carrots and sticks. A reasonable disciplinary scheme reinforces those efforts of teammates and coaches. 3
Sure, many schools have bad disciplinary schemes–NCHS’ involved a condescending ass smiling at you for a half an hour if you were a boy–but effective schools can build in discipline that is done with the idea of keeping students involved as a part of the process.
So, yes to discipline involing the extracurricular, no to automatic banning of extracurriculars.
I am not a legal expert but my understanding of the Pottawatomie v Earls case of 2001/2 (?) is similar to the approach being taken. All students as of 2002 can be drug tested if they are engaged in ANY student activities, athletic or otherwise, and done so randomly with no specific individual suspicion of any kind. That seems to be a similar approach here and one that many grad school classes for admin seem to be promoting….ie, if you link any discipline/rules/etc to anything hook it to voluntary activities. Makes for horrible policy, I and many other educators, social workers, etc, agree but it seems to be the direction most administrators are being directed to go in their coursework. If anyone wants to know the real problems in American Education, second to funding issues, I would say check out Admin. training programs. 3rd greatest problem is likely my grammar.
Thanks,
El Maestro