the "zero tolerance" school policy and its absurdity [View All]

[sgxnk]

i totally agree with the thrust of this article listed below (even though i often think the APA is full of cr*p).

imo, and ime, the presence of police officers in school should be a RARITY, not the commonplace occurrence it is now - with the advent of DARE, etc. and the concept of "school resource officer". i say this AS a police officer. imo, it's absurd. in my high school years, i don't recall EVER seeing a police officer on campus - and that's perfectly acceptable. the idea that we need the heavy hand of govt. agents to deal with issues like schoolyard fights, possession of a few buds of marijuana, etc. is absurd to me.

one trend i have noticed more and more is that schools, that once would treat matters administratively, will more often call police into the school environment for assaults, "bullying", possession of small amounts of drugs and alcohol, etc.

this is also an extension of the nanny-state philosophy, that we need laws and strong action against "bullying:" and other such stuff. when in doubt - PASS A LAW philosopy.

many schoolteachers are also to blame for another increasing phenomenon i have seen. more and more, you will see (usually single parents, and most often single mothers) parents calling police for issues such as "my child is refusing to go to school". um... this is a POLICE MATTER? i can't even imagine the dependant impotence of a parent that feels the need to call police to tell their child that yes, they have to go school. fwiw, parents can (legally) use corporal punishment on kids who refuse to go to school. cops can't. furthermore, in reference to schoolteachers, many of them teach their ideology (not the law) which is that 'spanking is child abuse' and i see a two-pronged response to this stuff. 1) kids will call police because their parent is "abusing" them, when in fact all that happened was the kid called the mom a "f*cking b*tch" or something and got slapped in the face. that is not "child abuse" (well, not in the USA it aint. many nations do ban parents using corporalpunishment) but kids are indoctrinated by the political ideology of teachers who think it is into trying to intimidate their parents 2) parents (many of them) are totally afraid of using corporal punishment in many cases due to fear of prosecution. i have heard this firsthand over and over again

so, you've got a kid who refuses to go to school. a parent who is terrified of using corporal punishment (as a moral argument, some parents are against corporal punishment, and i respect that. but no parent should be cowed into thinking they will be arrested if they do), and who is now so dependant on the State (tm) that they will call police because little johnny has put his foot down and will not go to school

another element i see is the response to bullies. generally speaking, imo, the only thing schoolyard bullies respond to , is somebody who fights back. in the past, if little johnny came home and complained that little petey shoved him to the ground and took his lunch money, daddy or mommy would tell their kid - HIT HIM BACK, and the next time this happened - that solved the problem.

oh... no. not now. first of all school zero tolerance policies mean school administrators want all 'participants in violence" criminally charged. apparently, self-defense is a concept lost on the administrators. not to mention that, technically speaking, pushing a kid to the ground and taking money from him is a ROBBERY. of course, from a common sense angle it is absurd that the criminal justice system should waste their time and also that it is obscene that a schoolyard bully is arrested for a felony, but given the "zero tolerance" policy, many admin's feel handcuffed, so to speak, as do the cops.

i'd like to see a return to common sense parenting, and common sense schooling. like THAT will ever happen. and then of course, there are the stories where kids get punished under zero tolerance policies for having a miniature (like 2" long miniature gi joe ak-47) weapons, etc.

here is a USA today article on the APA (american psychological association_ report

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-08-09-zero-tolerance_x.htm

an excerpt:

There are growing signs that zero-tolerance policies are steering more teens into the juvenile justice system, says Russell Skiba, an Indiana University educational psychologist. "Things that used to be handled by principals land kids in juvenile detention," he says. The report also mentions racial disparities; minorities are expelled more often than whites for comparable offenses.

Principals who want to be flexible "may be caught in a catch-22," says Richard Flanary of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. If school boards set rigid policies, principals who defy them risk losing their jobs. "Then they're bashed in the press for overreacting to kids' misbehavior."