No, you don't know that from an anecdote any more than I would know it.
I think you are misunderstanding me: I am saying that the prevalence of misbehavior by children who are(fill in the blank) should have no bearing on the evaluation of any particular child who belongs to the same (fill in the blank group).
If it is known in a particular school that blonde haired, blue eyed children are almost always excellent singers but poor at math, there is no reason to assume that the blonde haired blue eyed child standing before you should be put in the choir and sent to remedial math. That individual child should be evaluated as an individual.
If it is known that almost all little boys who wear red t-shirts also like to play with fire trucks and also chew gum in class when they aren't supposed to, there is no reason to withhold a fire truck from this particular child for chewing gum in class--unless he actually chews gum in class. And if a little boy or girl wearing a blue shirt is chewing gum in class, they should similarly have some valued privilege removed if that is how discipline for that offense is decided.
When I was a kid, it was well known that girls didn't like to climb trees, catch frogs, were afraid of spiders and insects and couldn't run as fast as a boy could run. Also that girls liked to play with dolls and didn't like to get dirty. And were good at reading but not good at math.
My sisters and I were always the top math student in our class. I loved climbing trees, catching frogs and all manner of insects and spiders, could run as fast as any boy until they all gained several inches in height on me. I did like dolls, read constantly and rarely noticed if I got dirty doing anything I liked doing. A fair number of people, including my mother, tried to limit my choices because I was a girl. Fortunately, my father encouraged me to do what I wanted to do. At least up to a point but that's a whole different story.
What does matter is if the same offense committed by a white child is punished in the same manner and with the same severity as if a black child committed the same offense.
I agree that similar misbehaviour under similar circumstances warrants similar punishments.
In this particular case, it appears that the child in the OP, who happens to be black, was indeed punished more harshly than other children who committed similar or worse offenses. Those other children happen to be white.
I notice the author of the article states the reason for the child's last suspension, but not the reasons for any of the other suspensions. We don't know why her children have been suspended so many times but I suspect that like a good behavior bond, once you've been suspended once more minor violations warrant further suspensions.
We don't know the circumstances of the (lack of) suspensions of the other children. The woman whose child sent a kid to the hospital though ought to have had her child suspended. I can't think of any circumstances where such a child should be allowed to remain in an environment with other children.
Yes, some details are missing, which is disappointing and makes it harder to assess what happened or did not happen.
However, I do not take it as an absolute given that her children were repeatedly suspended for justifiable reasons. It certainly may have been the case. Maybe they were all a rowdy bunch of kids and the teacher suspended them with just cause each time. I would like to believe that is true but I know that teachers are people and often like one child more than another and treat children they like differently than the ones they don't like.
I benefited from this greatly when I was in school. My older sister was a model student--she was very smart, worked hard and was very compliant. As soon as teachers saw my name on the class list, they were prepared to like me and assumed from the very first that I was also very smart and would work hard and be compliant. I didn't do as well with being compliant as my sister but I definitely skated by because they teachers were very much disposed to like me, based on my name and association with my sister.
I was lucky: I saw kids who were considered to be from 'bad' families treated less well. One year, the teacher had a particular dislike for one boy--Mike. I don't really know why. He wasn't mean, or loud and his misbehavior was very minor and typical of boys of that age. But she disliked him intensely and blamed him for any thing that went missing (as far as I knew, he never actually took anything) and any minor vandalism such as a torn poster. This happened even when the corner of a poster was torn on a day he wasn't in class. He actually got sent to the principal for that one. I nearly did as well for pointing out that he was absent that day. Another boy, Billy, she adored. I also didn't understand why. He wasn't particularly bright or nice looking; his manners weren't any different than any other boy. He was actually quite vicious to the one student in our class who was mildly developmentally disabled. The teacher witnessed his bullying of this other child and said and did nothing to correct it or to protect the student. In those days, kids never went home to their parents and complained about the teacher. The assumption was that the parents would always side with the teacher.
In the custom of the day, kids who were ahead in their work were sometimes asked to help the kids who were behind. She asked me to help Mike (the kid she didn't like) because he was 'really behind in his math facts' and 'not very good at math.' Actually, I believed this as well: I saw his papers often had bad grades on them when she passed them back. But in fact, he was quite bright, knew all his math facts and was actually ahead of the class in math. But he knew it didn't matter: the teacher didn't like him. After that year, his family moved and I lost track of him.
The other boy, the one she liked so much: he was also behind and she wanted me to help him. She told me that I earned top scores because I was lucky and that he was just as bright but not so lucky as I was. As it happens, she might have been right--perhaps he was bright and simply didn't apply himself but he certainly didn't seem to know his basic math facts. We went to the same school until graduation although we were never in the same classes again. I took the most advanced classes our small high school offered. He took the easiest he could find and starred in football for the high school. No idea what happened to him after that but he wasn't good enough in football to get a scholarship. He didn't go to university but perhaps to trade school. I never heard.
I know you hate anecdotes. The purpose wasn't to demonstrate that teachers are poor judges of their students or that all teachers are prejudiced unfairly against some students. But some teachers are indeed biased. I doubt that it is conscious. I am certain that my teachers thought I deserved every single break I got but I was never so sure. I know that my own minor misbehavior was often overlooked by the majority of my teachers. And some kids were blamed for things they never did and never could have done.
The question then is: why was this particular child punished more harshly?
We don't know why, or even if it was more harsh than similar children in similar circumstances in the same facility. We've been given an anecdote with almost no substance whatever.
People respond to anecdotes but people should be persuaded by data instead.
People respond to stories rather than data. It's perhaps a fault but the truth is that if we only looked at data, we could easily draw the wrong conclusions. Data only tells you about a group and does not tell you about an individual.
In school, students should be treated as individuals, not as representatives of this demographic or that.
One thing I did not like about the OP was the inclusion of a picture of her very cute, smiling son in the article. I presume this was meant to prejudice us against thinking he deserved suspensions. I think that if her children have been suspended eight times between them, there was probably a reason.
I don't know. Blacks, particularly black males are fairly demonized and seen as being badly behaved future criminals instead of individuals who are unlikely to become criminals. (Most blacks do not become criminals). The cute, smiling face made you see her child as an adorable child, not some anonymous statistic.
I agree that if her kids were suspended 8 times, there was probably a reason. The reasons were probably related to misbehavior but it is also possible that the teacher(s) did not care for the children or the family and viewed those particular children under a more harsh lens.
Since some insist that rates of criminal behavior by adults is relevant to this discussion, then so should be punishment meted out to those convicted of criminal acts. Data demonstrates that black defendents receive prison sentences at rates which exceed those of white defendants for almost all offenses, and that black defendants are more likely than whites to receive the maximum sentence for similar criminal offenses.
And that's a problem with the justice system. Similar crimes under similar circumstances should get similar punishments.
Agreed. Mostly.
It appears that under our criminal justice system, blacks receive harsher penalties for offenses for which they are convicted compared with whites.
Isn't it reasonable to at least consider that the color of the child's skin had an effect on the way the child was assessed and judged by the teacher and the school?
Yes, but what's the size of the effect? In particular, how much does it explain of the Black-White child suspension difference?
What data shows is that in fact black children receive school suspensions far more frequently than white students do for similar offenses. It seems reasonable to look at this closely and to see if it is possible to determine to what extent the difference in suspension rates is due to racism (which I assume is not deliberate on the part of the teacher.)
If two three year olds commit the same offense and receive punishments which differ in severity, then that opens the question of why the difference in severity of punishment. If there is a pattern: children with red hair receive harsher punishment than children with blonde hair, for example, one might wonder if the teacher has an unconscious preference for blonde children. If the child who receives the harsher punishment is non-white, it is also reasonable to wonder if the teacher has an unconscious prejudice against non-white children and tends to assess their behavior more harshly.
But we don't know. We don't know how many children this child care facility has suspended and what they've suspended children for. You haven't established there's a pattern.
There is limited information from the article. On the assumption--and yes that is an assumption, not a fact--that everything is exactly as presented in the article, it does appear that the teacher might have judged the black child more harshly than the white children.
Of course we don't know as a fact. But data suggests that this unequal treatment is widespread and does indeed start at the preschool level.
