"zero tolerance" idiocy strikes again

NEWARK, Del. — Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé by his side to vouch for him.

Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.

*snip*

.... based on the code of conduct for the Christina School District, where Zachary is a first grader, school officials had no choice. They had to suspend him because, “regardless of possessor’s intent,” knives are banned.

READ MORE:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html?no_interstitial

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Wow. It happens again.....

this is what happens when you live in a paranoid, reactionary society.

I'm speechless.

I took one of those things to school once and not much happened except my mom yelled at me for disobeying her. Reform school seems a bit like overkill. No wait, it seems a LOT like overkill.

What is wrong with school adminstrators? This is an example of why a lot of people are willing to send their kids to private schools where admistrative discretion is still something one can expect. And if you don't like the decision, then you can take your money and go somewhere else.

relieve adults/administrators of having to made judgemental decisions. If they are only following orders (ie, policy) they are absolved of the responsibility of their actions.

But when real situations like this happen, they just look like bullies.

I would say this borders on child abuse.

There once was a time, and I know this will come as a shock to younger folks, when people in charge of things were called "authority figures," and we granted them something called "authority" to run things. Some of these so-called authority figures ran the local schools, and were put into positions like superintendent and principal to manage schools and classrooms, teachers and students. The relied on their education, training, and own judgment to make decisions about things. They talked with each other about difficult situations to try to find better solutions. They weren't perfect, but we largely left them in place to run things.

However, now we let the most nervous, most pants-wettingly scared people run things, whether it's airport security or the school on the corner. And these people have decreed that "zero tolerance" is the policy now. Zero tolerance doesn't take into account training or experience or judgment. Zero tolerance takes all those valuable assets out of the running of schools, and replaces them with the most alarmist, reactionary, draconian rules possible. So a 6-year-old with a camping utensil is viewed in exactly the same light as a 16-year-old switchblade-wielding sociopath with a list of behavorial problems a mile long.

This is stupid, and to say the school district has no choice is to give in to the morons, who have been allowed to become far more powerful than we ever should have let them become.

I don't think that is the answer for this kid.

I understand the need schools have for handling issues in a direct manner, but there has to be more discretion. A kid who is always violent and brings a knife is different than a kid bringing his Cub Scout utensil set.

Honestly, there are no easy answers.

bring it to school again. Seeing as he doesn't have a record of disciplinary/other issues, that should suffice.

In the overall violence that is increasing in our schools, there are no easy answers. Zero tolerance is a tool to keep children safe from violent students, but clearly, it gets out of control and/or ties the hands of administrators.

The issue of violence is much deeper than Zero Tolerance. It is what happens when a nation allows itself to be run on fear. This is the end result of decades of "BE AFRAID! BE AFRAID! BE AFRAID!"

suburban, upper middle class school districts that don't have to face the troubles that are happening in more urban school districts.

It always seems to me when one of these cases comes up, the district made some sort of reactionary measure to something that was never an issue in their school district to begin with.

the kid and giving it back to them after school. Or at the end of the year. I remember teachers with drawers full of crap, pocket knives, yo-yo's, chattering teeth, toys of all sorts... This is insanity.

And we can't seem to find any.