Rules, Laws, Exceptions, and Wisdom
I nearly cried when I read the story of a Vermont principal who was removed from her job because of a law’s (I hope) unintended results. As teachers, we often see similar situations where the best of intentions generate a classroom or school rule. Later, unforeseen circumstances ultimately bring that rule to cause unintended damage in a horrific reversal of crime and victim. The student who is “caught” is not the one we hoped to punish. Circumstance twists into gut-wrenching injustice.
In the case of this principal, the “crime” was a failing school, deemed “failing” most likely because of the misapplication of a testing protocol on immigrant, special ed, or newly-arrived children. The principal hero-turned-victim must walk away from the progress that was occurring in the school. A tragedy for sure.
The broader question is how to balance consistency with reason for any well-meaning legislator, school board, or even classroom-teacher-maker-of-rules. In a classroom situation, most teachers, when confronted with an unexpectedly inverted instance of a rule violation, will stop and adjust. There may be an informal “appeal” strategy or 
rewriting of the rule. The most secure teacher will even admit the mistake as he/she changes the rule on the bulletin board. Maybe there is a private conference with the student in the “odd” situation, or maybe the teacher simply “forgets” to apply the rule in this case. Mr/Mrs Solomon knows justice when he/she sees and applies it. Maybe teachers are so accustomed to differentiating to eschew justice: the right lesson, the right rule, the right way to admonish this student, the right thing for him/her to learn from this experience.
In government, finding the right way to deal with all the exceptions is much harder. I applaud those who truly want to make schools better, but not their rigidity. I recognize that there are schools with huge problems. But maybe we should take lessons from those who design lessons every day. You have to be willing to adjust according to the needs of the learner. If the learner is an entire school, adjust for it. If the rule-writers messed up, ask them to revise and learn, too. Let’s be reasonable.
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