Zero Tolerance for Zero tolerance.

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

When I talk to ordinary people. (Those that vote but hardly participate on political boards) They tend to have issues a little different than what we often feel our America's hot button issues.

One of the pet peeves I run into is Zero tolerance policies at schools. Is there a lazier less American policy in existence. Now while republicans are generally to blame I notice that our democratic leadership has never address this.

Why? It would certainly be popular. Parents are scared of them, civil libertarians are appalled and regular Americans see zero tolerance as proof that those that can't do anything become school administrators.

Where there is a democrat on a school board or in a mayors office or running a teachers local there should be a concerted effort to get rid of these senseless rules and return to the common sense of a case by case basis.

We pay these school administrators often over a hundred thousand dollars a year you would think for that kind of money we could get someone who could make a judgment call or two.


Last this is exactly the kind of popular populist point of view a Democratic presidential candidate can latch onto to jump start ones campaign. Like it or not this is what people care about.

[DemBones DemBones]

1. Zero tolerance is ridiculous.

I taught high school and I am very much in favor of very specific and fair rules, including a dress code, that are fairly enforced. Fair enforcement requires teachers and administrators to use their brains and put violations of rules into context.

Zero tolerance allows people to turn off their brains and ignore context. Zero sense.

[Orsino]

24. Exactly. Zero tolerance is an excuse not to have to work.

I understand its inevitability in this age of parsimony in education. We haven't given schools the budgets they need to face the worst problems, but that's not the fault of educators.

[rusty quoin]

2. I agree with you.

But one thing I think that is good is zero tolerance for guns in a school. I don't think that is laziness, but common sense. The problem I have is when they try to use zero tolerance in place of common sense.

[Flabbergasted]

5. Oh I don't know, A gun here or there isn't so bad.

:evilgrin:

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

9. I agree but even zero tolerance against guns has gotten silly

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0823gun0823.html

Suspension at Valley junior high over gun sketch angers parents
Ray Parker
The Arizona Republic
Aug. 23, 2007 12:00 AM

After an eighth-grader was suspended for drawing a picture of a gun on an assignment paper, angry parents are questioning whether the Chandler Unified School District went too far with its zero-tolerance policy.

The Payne Junior High eighth-grader, along with another student, was suspended Monday for five days for the drawing. Parents Paula and Ben Mosteller were able to get the suspension reduced to three days after meeting with school officials.

The uproar over the drawing, which the student turned in with a school assignment and contended was just a doodle, cuts to the question of what constitutes a "threat."

Craig Gilbert, Chandler director of secondary education, said there is a range of punishment that administrators can hand down for "implied threats," ranging from a parent conference to suspension and expulsion.


Suspending or expelling a seventh grader for doodling a gun is batshit insane and this is hardly an isolated incident.

[qdemn7]

21. Nope not even that!

As Tian Zhuangzhuang pointed out a student got into trouble for DRAWING a picture of a gun. I'm 50 yrs old and It's a damn good thing I don't have children because I would probably been arrested on more than one occasion. Probably for threatening to whip the ignorant-ass of some dumb as a box-of-rocks school personnel for "zero-tolerancing" my kids. I swear, it seems the more advanced technologically America gets the more regressive sociologically we get. Makes one wonder what these Departments of "Education" (hollow laugh) are teaching at so-called institutions of "higher" learning. No wonder more people are home-schooling their children.

My story vis-a-vis guns:

High School 1971-1975

I attended South San Antonio High School from August 1971 to May 1975. I was in Army JROTC all 4 years, We had an honest-to-god 50 ft Small Bore Rifle ( 22 caliber ) range in the ROTC department on the 2nd floor of our school. We had a Rifle Team that was outstanding. My Sophomore year, ROTC admitted females. Several women were always on the team and they were all SUPERIOR shots. One classmate of mine named Rosemary had every damn SBR medal the NRA ever issued. Up to and including Distinguished Expert. In addition she had enough trophies to put any bowler to shame. She was such a better shot than me it was pathetic. (I was not on the team.)

Not ONCE did we ever have an accident. NEVER. Hearing protection was mandatory. In addition we never had any gun-phobic adults claiming the school was teaching children to kill or guns were the spawn of Satan.

In addition we drilled with real M-14 rifles assault rifles. All these things needed was a firing pin inserted to make them fully functional. The barrels were not blocked. The did have the external full-auto selector switch removed, however. I got to fire them (semi-auto) at ROTC summer camp in 1972 at Camp Mabry outside San Antonio..

The viewpoint espoused by some is symptomatic of just how far this society has turned into a nation of phobic entities afraid of damn near anyone and everything.

[rwenos]

3. Zero Tolerance = Oversimplification

The world is a lot simpler if those who are in charge of enforcing rules never have to make judgment call.s Zero Tolerance is appealing to reactionary parents and people who feel control of their own lives slipping away.

Shades of grey? "Sounds like a lily-livered member of the Democrat Party to me!"

Why do these people always make me think of Bob Ewell in "To Kill a Mockingbird"?

[liberalmuse]

4. I agree.

Zero Tolerance = Zero use of common sense. Collective punishment is wrong. My daughter got in trouble for writing her birthday on a hall calendar while standing in line for lunch (jr high). You'd have thought she brought a gun to school. She was put in detention for a week, and had to stay after school for two hours a day during that week doing janitorial duties. She also had to make a new calendar. She also got reamed by a teacher who pretty much called her a 'criminal'. I think her having to make a new calendar and apologizing to the kids for marring their work (she wasn't made to do that) would have been sufficient.

[rusty quoin]

6. You've got to wonder what many of the teachers think about such punishment.

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

16. Why are they in favor of it?

Why is anyone? You always hear about these crazy rules but no one person seems responsible for them. It's always what can you do? Rather than that's Jane's policy and I agree with it

[shimmergal]

7. Good idea!

My grandson got kicked out of h.s. for having a friend's baseball bat in his car trunk. Neither boy had ever been violent--it was just a stupid interpretation of z.t., that equated baseball bats with a weapon.
He ended up dropping out--the family moved that summer, but the school system made it so hard to transfer his records that he eventually just gave up.

He did later go on to get his GED and is doing OK, but who knows how much the whole experience has affected his whole future life adversely. It's like, what's the matter with those high-paid school administrators? Don't they want kids to play baseball--I thought it was the grfeat American game.
And what about all those platitudes to "stay in school?"

[flashl]

8. Zero tolerance = School to prison pipeline

Deconstructing the School-to-Prison Pipeline: New Directions for Youth Development, No. 99,
Johanna Wald (Editor), Daniel J. Losen (Editor),ISBN: 978-0-7879-7227-1

Here is an intro in NAACP PDF booklet on the same

In the last decade, the punitive and overzealous tools and approaches of the modern criminal justice system have seeped into our schools, serving to remove children from mainstream educational environments and funnel them onto a one-way path toward prison. These various policies, collectively referred to as the School-to-Prison Pipeline, push children out of school and hasten their entry into the juvenile, and eventually the criminal, justice system, where prison is the end of the road.

Historical inequities, such as segregated education, concentrated poverty, and racial disparities in law enforcement, all feed the pipeline.

The School-to-Prison Pipeline is one of the most urgent challenges in education today.

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

12. Yup get used to those searches and metal detectors early.

My question about that is why do some democrats support this?

(There are plenty of school districts run exclusively by Democrats I haven't studied the issue but I have seen no indication they are less gung ho about Zero tolerance or treating children as if they were criminals)

[flashl]

13. The school to prison pipeline is a moneymaker

The education systems’ involvement in prison stocks for profit clearly indicates at every sector in the U.S. is economically benefiting from the prison population for income.

The last time I checked on the school to prison pipeline, I was surprised to learn that for-profit-prisons are the second largest employer in the U.S.

[PDenton]

10. Times have changed

Back when I was living near Tampa (actually Brandon, Florida) as a kid in the 80's, I took a replica of a gun to school and dressed up like a pirate for Gasparilla Day. I also had a toy sword. Just shows you how times change.

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

18. Mine had a smoking area.... for the kids.

Yeah kids today can't even conceive of that. And school resource officers and lockdowns? We used to go off campus for lunch or if we had a free period.

I mean we were 16

We survived.

(And don't tell me it was a different time. I'm sure the crime rate among juvies was higher than now. And we had drugs and sex. But unlike the puritans of today we actually thought the purpose of life was to enjoy it.)

[Odin2005]

20. You guys had a STUDENT SMOKING AREA!?!

:wow:

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

23. Yes in the early-mid eighties... it was outdoors.

And only at the high school. We were there to learn and get into college. People treated us like young adults not potential felons.

[renie408]

11. My son is an honor student, in the top ten in his class, never so much as had

detention for ANYTHING, is never tardy...nothing.

Last year he and some of his uber-geek friends were discussing the mob mentality and how the average person reacts to various things. As a 'social experiment', at the end of lunch, they started to head out the doors of the cafeteria and two of them yelled "FIGHT!" Immediately the cafeteria emptied into the courtyard.

Ok, I am not excusing any of it. It was a phenomenally stupid thing to do. He and his friends were nearly arrested, were kept under the watch of the school's policeman for over three hours, received a one day out of school suspension and a permanent black mark on their school record. These four kids are the top four condenders to be valedictorian next year. None of these kids had ever been in trouble before. It was only due to hysteria on my part that they didn't arrest them. This will most likely effect my son's ability to get a scholarship.

The reason? They have a zero tolerance policy for people who incite a riot.

[Trillo]

14. Our society seems based around perseverance:

teaching children to "give up" by "casting out" teaches failure, not success. Schools, as they were structured when I was compelled to attend, were my generations first encounter with the entity that divides us against ourselves, and is the setup for a future lifetime of misery and unhappiness for all but a few.

The primary purpose of K-12 schools does not seem to be about passing on knowledge, but instead primarily to impress upon the great mass of students the futility of life: simultaneously the system is identifying and preening a very small favored group of students for future greatness as elites.

School seemed primarily concerned about removing JOY from life, while explicitly teaching the right of everyone to "pursue Happiness," one lesson of paradox likely to immobilize. School did not seem to be about finding and building upon a young person's natural talents and strengths, and encouraging the individuals' various and diverse talents: it sought to make each student the same, with the same skill sets; it seemed to be mostly concerned with finding what students could not do well, finding their weaknesses, and then exploiting and exploring those weaknesses to a point well beyond boredom and approaching tyranny.

It was not about finding each student's point of interested, mindful concentration; it was to interrupt such concentration continually throughout each and every hour.

Zero Tolerance policies are largely consistent with and, a continuation of, the above. Much more than just the policy itself, but the example made of students when it is used, is that only the perfectly submissive 'perfect' student will be tolerated. Clearly, zero tolerance policies provide us our first peek into the institutionalized authoritarian mindset.

I rather doubt that things will change until there is the equivalent of a quantum mindset change among the ruling elite. They seem to have benefited from the currently-existing system. It is handy to have a class of workers that can be emotionally wounded with hot-button words carefully framed and associated during the formative years of early education in a lose-lose system from which there is no escape.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. It's a kind of McCarthyism.

Fifty years from now people are going to look back at "zero tolerance" and wonder how people could be so stupid.

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

19. I hope so I wonder why we put up with it now? nt

[ThomCat]

17. Zero Tolerance policies are invitations for abuse.

There should never be any policy that requires people to stop thinking and simply apply penalties. Ever.

[JVS]

22. Refer all extraordinary matters to the Bishop, that's the medieval way!

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

25. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition