"A clean slate every year"

Senator Linda Lopez is carrying a memorial, SM062, link, that would lead to a Student Bill of Rights.  There are a number of problems, not the least of which is, the Memorial will give students a greater voice in running their schools than teachers have.  I can't wait to see how that works out.

The very worst and most problematic right Lopez would give students;

..., students have the right to schools ...  in which
students are given a clean slate each year ...

A two hundred pound bully who bitch-slapped a kid after robbing him in front of a cafeteria full of kids, and his victim, will start the next school year with the same record.

If erasing a kid's slate every year is good for them and their school, why not give them a clean slate every semester, every 9 weeks, every month?

Hell, why not clean their slate every morning?

Nowhere in their lives will students as adults, find their record expunged every year, no matter what. Erasing records is a disservice to kids who accumulate no record.  Treating "good" kids and "bad" kids exactly the same cheats the kids who follow the rules out of the recognition they deserve.  And for no reason except to insulate thugs and bullies from the consequences of their choices.

Ayn Rand wrote;

"It is not justice or equal treatment that you grant to men when you abstain equally from praising men's virtues and from condemning men's vices. When your impartial attitude declares, in effect, that neither the good nor the evil may expect anything from you - whom do you betray and whom do you encourage?"

photo Mark Bralley