Week 9: Focus

At my school we have a pretty tight discipline system considering we are a public school. We don’t call our discipline system “discipline,” though, we call it “culture.” It’s kind of like how in the US we call our military apparatus The Department of Defense, when most of what they do would be considered offense. The US does this because, in the end, the main goal of the DOD is to defend the nation. At school the logic is the same. In the end, our main goal is to have a positive school culture.

There are countless other things our country does to defend the nation, and there are countless other things our school does to create a positive culture. However, the backbone of our nation’s security is the DOD, and the backbone of our school’s culture is the discipline system.

  

The DOD looking rather offensive.

Our discipline (culture) system runs on demerits. There is a long list of things students can get demerits for. It ranges from one demerit for less serious infractions to eight demerits for more serious infractions. The most serious infractions warrant suspension, which only the administration can levy. If a student gets four demerits in a two week cycle, then they have to serve a two and a half hour detention on Wednesday afternoon. A student can receive three demerits without consequence. I realize it’s a little complicated but it actually runs rather smoothly at this point. Most students know exactly how many demerits they have in the current two week cycle, and most students keep themselves out of detention each week.

Some students, however, don’t. They find themselves in detention. Some students earn a few dentions a year, while others are there every week. Nothing shocking here. It just sounds like school, right? Kids that do bad things get detentions. All is fair and right with the world! I can see my parents nodding their heads right now whispering, “damn right, and that’s the way it should be!”

Not so fast. Let’s look at the data. I pulled the demerit data from our Assistant Dean from last week (She said I could, this was not a Russian Wikileak). She logs the most demerits every week by far. Generally, she logs hundreds of demerits and the next highest are teachers that can range from 0-50. So, what are kids getting demerits for?  

Answer: being late to school. This was not a weird week. Week in and week out, the majority of demerits logged at school are for being tardy.

Now that we have identified this, let’s revisit the the purpose of the discipline system of the school. Previously, I said that that purpose is to “create a positive culture at the school.” Does showing up on time for school “create a positive culture?” Sure it does. However, I wouldn’t say that it’s the number one thing. I’m not even sure it’s top 5. Nevertheless, every Wednesday the gym is packed with poor souls that just can’t get to school on time.

So what? I call this post focus because I think folks at school, in this country, and the world need to focus on what is actually happening and not get distracted by the sensational stuff. For example, if you went to the teachers’ lounge any given day during lunch, do you think that we are talking about how the majority of the students in detention each week are in there because of tardies? Nope. We are telling “war” stories of a kid that told us to “shove-it” or someone we caught texting in class. We tend to focus on what I am going to call “teenager terrorism.” However, there are so few “teenage terrorists” out there and so few acts of “teenager terrorism.”

This week’s world events were similar. There was a terrorist attack in London that took the lives of five people (including the attacker) and wounded several others. This was scary and upsetting. However, premature death by terrorism or even violence for that matter is simply not a problem in the UK. Sure, it happens from time-to-time. And when it does, it matters--especially to the victims and their family and friends. However, that leaves us with the question: what is killing people in the UK prematurally?

Top 5 Causes of Premature Death in the UK

   

Article Link     

It’s not much different in the United States. Here’s our stats:

Sure, some people in the UK and USA are prematurely killed by terrorism or violence. However, the overwhelming majority of us are dying from our lifestyle, diet and disease. Sure, some of the students in detention on Wednesday have engaged in “teenage terrorism.” However, most of them just came late to school.

How is the school’s system of discipline dealing with the tardy causalities? How is the DOD dealing with the lifestyle, diet and disease causalities? It’s simple: they’re not. That’s not their jurisdiction. But that is what is putting students into detention and that is what is putting Britons and Americans into early graves.

This week, as the world worried about terrorism, the USA failed to put together a healthcare bill that would fix some of the problems of the Affordable Care Act. As I just demonstrated lifestyle, diet and disease are killing us daily. If terrorists were killing us at the same rate do you think we would fail to put together a bipartisan approach to defeat the threat? Please! We would do it in an instant and then afterwards Congress would sing God Bless America in unison.

Congress singing God Bless America after September 11, 2001

Sometimes it’s important to stop, focus, and look at the data. “Teenager terrorism” and real terrorism are realities of life. If we dropped our demerit system, I have no doubt that “teenager terrorism” would increase. If the DOD ceased to exist, our country would be at risk in many ways. However, right now our demerit system is not servicing our tardy students that don’t really pose a threat to our school’s culture. Likewise, our country and the UK have set up ultra defensive and offensive tactics to keep its citizens safe from terrorism while not doing enough to address the threats imposed by lifestyle, diet and disease.

Trump said “Obamacare unfortunately will explode… It’s going to have a very bad year.” Could you imagine if he said this about terrorism? “Sorry folks but we are going to be attacked a lot. It’s going to be rough. Nothing we can do. We are just going to let it happen and then we’ll learn and we’ll come up with something.”

So what do we do? What’s for homework? We need to focus. Talk about the Affordable Care Act. Talk about how it’s helping us. Talk about how it’s hurting us. Share our stories. The more we talk the more we show that we care more about healthcare than we do about terrorism. When we do that the leaders will have to listen. Let’s talk about how our lifestyle is killing us. Let’s be honest about how our diet is killing us. Let’s fight diseases with the same vigor we fight terrorism. Let’s focus.