No Child Should Have to Earn Their Education

 

The work of advocacy is hard. It’s messy. It’s exhausting. And none of that is accidental. Public education systems are designed to wear down resistance. They rely on overwhelm and confusion to keep parents, educators, and students compliant. When fear and urgency take over, clear thinking and action become difficult. That, too, is by design.

There were days I came home in tears, not because of the students, but because of what I heard adults in power say about them. It was heartbreaking. Comments about how some children were better off at home playing video games. There were frequent judgments about parenting, assumptions about effort, and statements that made it clear: some students were seen as problems to be managed, not as people to be understood.

Over and over again, I witnessed a fundamental failure. Instead of asking what’s getting in the way of this student’s success, the system asked what’s wrong with this student? The child became the problem. And once the child was framed that way, the burden was quietly passed to the family. Fix them. Discipline them. Medicate them. Keep them home when things get hard.

Parents are often told that the first step to getting support is to seek a referral, pursue an assessment, or obtain a diagnosis, knowing full well that the waitlists for all of these can stretch months, even years. In the meantime, while the paperwork circulates and appointments remain out of reach, the student continues to struggle with little to no support in place. The message is clear: until you can prove your child’s needs through formal documentation, their struggles don’t count. But as the years go on, the challenges often grow more complex. What might have been addressed early with meaningful accommodation instead becomes a pattern of failure, frustration, and exclusion. And by the time the system acknowledges the need for support, the harm has already been done.

This is how exclusion works—quietly, and often with a smile.

Some students are placed on reduced timetables. They’re told they can return to full-time learning if they can show enough “good days.” They miss field trips, gym, art, or recess because “they didn’t earn it.” Their education becomes conditional, with access granted only through obedience. But education is not a reward.

These practices are not neutral. They are deeply embedded in outdated disciplinary models that value order over understanding. The focus is on controlling behaviour, not on supporting students. The result is systems full of charts, behaviour tracking, token boards, gem jars, and reward apps that center compliance. But compliance doesn’t build connection. It doesn’t build trust. It doesn’t build inclusion.

And it certainly doesn’t support the students who are struggling the most.

Shame is also a powerful force in these systems. Too often, it’s used to pressure parents into agreeing to decisions that are not in their child’s best interest. When a student’s needs surpass what the school is willing to provide, families are told that “all strategies have been exhausted,” that “there are no more resources,” and that “we can no longer ensure safety.” What starts as a discussion about support quietly shifts into a framing of risk and liability. Parents are left to sign off on reduced timetables, alternate placements, or informal removals, not because they agree, but because they’re made to feel they have no other choice. It’s not true collaboration. It’s coercion. And it leaves families feeling abandoned by the very system meant to serve them.

We must shift our lens. We must stop viewing students as the problem and start asking what problems they are facing. We must stop putting the onus on families to “fix” their child and start building environments that support who that child is.

Because no child should have to earn their education. No child should have to comply to be welcomed. No child should be sent the message that their presence is a privilege.

Education is not something to be earned. Education is a basic human right.