Girl Suspended From School For Turning Cartwheels

Schoolyard Hazard?
No less than three Confidential TipWonks have requested our "take" on the Cartwheel Story.

For those that do not wish to click, I'll summarize: An 11 year-old girl in West Covina, California was asked several times to stop doing "cartwheels," hand-stands, and other gymnastic "moves" on the playground during lunch.

According to San Jose-Edison Charter Academy Principal Denise Patton, the girl was suspended for five days because she repeatedly disobeyed school employees who directed her to stop.

The girl's father, Leland Faegre, said that it is absurd to suspend his daughter for doing gymnastics when students were allowed to play basketball and other sports.

EdWonk's Opinion: On the surface, this appears to be one of those cases that we periodically read about. Our usual response here at the 'Wonks is to lampoon some overbearing or foolishly incompetent school administrator. We are tempted in this case. After-all, it appears ridiculous. I mean, suspending an 11 year-old little girl for doing cartwheels? How cruel.

The real issues lie beneath the surface. The girl repeatedly ignored legal directives to stop what she was doing. In school, that is called defiance. It was for defiance that she was suspended. However, if we can assume that this was her first suspension, we here at the 'Wonks think that 1 week was excessive. The two sources reviewed for this posting did not indicate what, if any, prior disciplinary incidents the girl may have been involved in.

And what would have been the case if the school had allowed the girl to continue her gymnastics on the playground? Doubtless, there was no safety equipment.

That's an easy call for us to make. If the girl hurt herself or another child, then the parents would be screaming to an attorney about how the school was negligent. The parents would be demanding substantial monetary compensation from the school.

As much as we like to subject the foibles and major screw-ups of the Educational Bureaucracy to public ridicule, we can't do it in this case. As was once told to me by a highly-respected teaching colleague: "Even a broken clock is correct twice per day."