New York City public schools suspend twice as many students as they did in 2005, because suspension has become the fashionable disciplinary method. The upshot: it’s a lot easier to deal with schoolkids when they’re not in class chewing their Hubba Bubba and yelling crazy stuff at each other. Almost makes you wonder why we even bother having schools in the first place.

The downside of zero-tolerance suspension policies is that the kids don’t spend their days in school learning things, which doesn’t help our economy very much. Or does it? Given that suspensions are lengthening, they probably help a lot of the city’s arcades and pizza places stay in business:

Of roughly 74,000 suspensions given out in the 2008-9 school year, about 11,000 lasted one to five days, while 5,500 ran anywhere from 30 days to one year, the analysis shows. There were roughly 32,000 suspensions in 2002, and the vast majority of them lasted five days or less.

Have you ever been suspended? I was a goody-goody in school, so I never did. But it sounds kind of fun? Because then you don’t have to go to school, which is no fun.

(Photo: mujitra.)