May I Share An Opinion On The Whole Aizawa Critical Thing? His Philosophy Of "expelling To Give Kids

May I share an opinion on the whole Aizawa critical thing? His philosophy of "expelling to give kids a taste of death" doesn't make a lot of sense, both Bakugou and Izuku were caught and nearly died in a villain attack, Mina and Kirishima diffused an villain attack and is still impacted, but aizawa implicitly treated them like they are all privileged sheltered kids discovering the stakes in heroics for the first time

yes exactly!! I kinda went off on this so I'm putting most of this post under a 'keep reading' but essentially: Aizawa's teaching method (mostly the expulsion part) is incredibly flawed because it was based around his own trauma (Oboro's death), and it doesn't do anything good for his students, instead only working to their detriment no matter how much bnha wants to prove the opposite.

One of Aizawa's biggest character flaws (and honestly I'm not mad about it – it's actually a super interesting/cool flaw of his and I wish people would point it out more) is that he never really believes or acts like anything bad ever happens to anyone until he's explicitly told about it, or he's shown it. I think he genuinely believes that every student at UA has been babied since birth except for him and a select few people because of their quirks (Shinso), and every impulsive thing they do is because they don't believe in the consequences until they're shown them via expulsion. He believes that he is the only one who sees the consequences of being a hero because he's one of the only people who's seen someone die – one of his best friends – on the job, and it’s his job to teach everyone else that single fact.

and in many cases that is true! characters like Bakugo or even Izuku don't really get that the hero world is really dangerous until they attend UA. As All Might himself tells Izuku – heroes are expected to put their lives on the line for people. And as All Might (and Aizawa) knows, All Might, who is responsible for crime going down by at least 2%, is going to retire soon. Crime is going to rise. This means deaths like Oboro’s are going to rise, and Endeavor isn’t anywhere near the level to carry the weight of #1 quite like All Might did.

The problem is, there are generations of people from Aizawa to Izuku who have only known the world that All Might created for them, and that world is going to die very soon with a very unprepared Japan suffering in the fallout. So in Aizawa’s mind, the best way to help these future heroes understand that All Might isn’t going to be around to save them is to give them consequences via expulsion. So at the beginning of the year, he puts them all on the same level (aka everyone is some spoiled kid who doesn’t know the consequences of their own actions) and threatens them via expulsion to make sure they realize that death exists and that their actions have consequences.

Unfortunately for Aizawa and his worldview, not everyone is some spoiled kid who has been babied since birth except for him. We all know Midoriya’s situation is an abnormal one, I don’t think anyone would guess that a formerly quirkless child would be entering into the school with a quirk they just got that day, but as you stated both Bakugo, Kirishima, and Mina alone have been faced with real-world near-death scenarios and have survived. Hell, Bakugo and Midoriya’s Sludge Villain incident had made its way into the news! Midoriya and Bakugo nearly died and it was on the news, yet Aizawa still felt it apt to threaten Midoriya with expulsion (extra death) because he didn’t feel that Midoriya was trying hard enough with his quirk.

Why? He already nearly died once (twice technically but Aizawa doesn’t know that), there’s no need to ‘kill’ him again. Is it because All Might saved him and therefore Aizawa needs to push that All Might won’t always be around to help him by threatening him in a space where All Might has no power? Did Aizawa just not see or forget that Midoriya and Bakugo nearly died? Why does he threaten him here in front of his entire class? What purpose does it serve for Midoirya’s development? (there’s also a case to be made where he’s biased against Midoriya in the beginning simply because All Might likes him, but that’s a whole other discussion)

And of course, that’s just Midoriya. It’s bad enough that a kid who’s always been pushed down by other people up until this point is being threatened by yet another person who doesn’t believe in him, but what about the other kids? What about Todoroki, who has a powerful quirk but has been abused by his father since his quirk developed? What about Uraraka, who would probably do more heroic but illegal things within the series (like saving Bakugo) if her entire family’s well-being and livelihood didn’t hinge on the fact that she stayed in school and didn’t get expelled by the most hard-ass teacher in series. What about students with delicate situations that can’t afford to be expelled because of their circumstances?

Instead of doing or being heroic, they’d be putting all their focus into hopefully not getting expelled, following the rules, keeping their heads down, instead of, y’know, trusting the adults in their life and questioning authority when need be. If they do get expelled, at the very least it’ll keep a black stain on their records that will follow them for the rest of their careers, and they’ll have to explain how they got expelled from the most prestigious hero school in Japan time and time again, annoying at most and career-destroying at the worst. At the very most, it puts these kids in danger from their guardians. That’s terrifying.

For example, if Shoto got expelled, at the very least Endeavor would call in a complaint like a regular old Karen. At the very most (aka Fanon interpretations of Endeavor) Shouto would get his ass beat six ways to Sunday. Or, the more in-canon option, Endeavor would take up Shoto’s training full time, which is also not good and very dangerous for him. Either way, it's trouble for Shoto because Aizawa assumed that Shoto was a spoiled kid and needed to be taught a lesson.

And sure, Aizawa doesn’t expel anyone in 1-A, but that doesn’t change the fact that he has expelled students before, and as a result, a majority of them (re: class 2-A) don’t really like him or respect him. Aside from literally one girl, they think he’s scary. They don’t like him. Being a hardass teacher is one thing, being a hardass teacher who people like and respect despite the no-nonsense bullshit is another thing. And aside from class 1-A (it's important to note that none of them have gotten expelled from his class and have even trauma bonded with him) and that one 2-A girl, they don’t like or respect him. They fear him. And for as funny as that is, that’s not the sign of a good teacher.

It’s not necessarily lazy teaching since he does it with a purpose, but it’s not right. He’s basically giving his students the teaching equivalent of tough parenting, and as most people on the internet know, tough parenting only leads to negative consequences for the victims (the students). And furthermore, it's obvious he only does this because of his trauma with Oboro's death. Expulsion isn't traumatic, like I stated earlier it depends on the situation how serious being expelled would be for a student, but if you think about it this way – that Aizawa purposefully traumatizes/scares/hurts/destroys the trust of students in a completely different way from how he was traumatized to teach them a lesson without 'consequence' – that's not good! That's terrible, even, and incredibly harmful in the long run.

We even see the negative consequences of Aizawa's expulsion method in Aizawa himself! The consequences of Oboro's death (which expulsion is supposed to emulate) on him are detrimental to him – he goes into a very serious depression to the point where he'll only do the bare minimum to pass classes, and he isolates himself from his friends. We're explicitly shown that what he's doing isn't helping him or doing him any favors and it's only through healing from his trauma that he actually starts to get better. And he wants to do this to other students (albeit on a smaller scale) to teach them the same lesson he learned? What the hell! Who thought this was right?

(Nezu bc he authorized it but eh. That guy lives for chaos.)

I love Aizawa, really I do, but this expulsion game really isn't right.