The school discipline policies of suspension and expulsion in the United States work to maintain status quo authoritarian order, and reduce the democratic tendencies of collaboration, community, and resolution. The manner in which disciplinary policies are conveyed suggests with ontological certainty that suspension and expulsion are, and have always been, necessary in order to create a safe learning environment in American schools. The use of suspension and expulsion in schools, however, privileges certain ontological viewpoints, thus creating an oppressive environment for students who do not, consciously or unconsciously, submit to dominant ways of being.  The process of suspension and expulsion treats students as passive recipients of dominant order, rather than contributing members of their own self-construction.

Democracy is lacking in U.S. schools. The very structure of institutional schooling seems to limit, more and more, the values, principles and acts associated with democratic living and learning. Rather than “teaching” democracy through our acts and processes, we “teach” authoritarianism; teachers are appointed to positions of authority, ruling over subjects that have no say in their appointment, charged with telling students what to know and how to be.