Preschool Suspensions: Young Children Left Behind
Above photo: From The Nation. (Courtesy of Steven Depolo, CC BY 2.0)
Young children have now begun the new school year, many for the first time. How many will not be allowed to finish the school year due to being expelled or miss significant time in school due to suspension for unacceptable behavior or for violating some mandatory school policy? The most recent figures available come from a 2011-2012 study from the US Department of Education found that more than 8,000 public preschool students were suspended at least once, and almost half of those children more than once.
As early childhood educators who train teachers to promote the optimal development, learning, and overall wellbeing of all young children, we read these figures with deep concern. And we have many urgent questions that are not being adequately addressed at any level of society.
• Who are these children who cannot make it through a preschool program year? The Department of Education study found that a disproportionate number were black, low income, boys, disabled and/or English-language learners. These patterns represent many of the disparities that will continue throughout the school years and beyond.
• How will these suspended children understand what happened–what led to their suspension and why they cannot go to school? Young children do not think the way adults do. But their thinking, which is generally more like a slide than a movie, makes it hard for them to see logical causal connections–so they are unlikely to fully understand what they did that led to the teacher rejecting them and forbidding them from coming back to school. Their egocentrism and inability to take multiple points of view is likely to lead to their blaming themselves for what happened. Thus, young children are likely to understand little about a suspension that will help them return to school afterwards and be more successful. And it can very well harm their image of themselves as learners and their attitudes toward school at such a young age.
• What services exist to support suspended children? Generally, children who are Preschool Suspensions: Young Children Left Behind | PopularResistance.Org:
