Zero Tolerance in Schools

I noticed we don't have a thread on this, so I created this.

So, Zero Tolerance in schools. What do you think of it? What should be changed and what should be kept. What were some cases that stand out to you?

In theroy good

In practice, it means government employees (yeah, not the sharpest knifes) do stupid things like expel someone on a rifle drill team for an obviously prop rifle secured in their vehicle, or for taking prescribed medication.

edited 3rd Jun '11 10:15:42 PM by deuxhero

Or a grade school kid (I think it was a first grader?) for excitedly bringing in his shiny new boy scout knife to show everyone.

Or a third grader being expelled for having her grandmother send in a birthday cake and a knife to cut it, and being reported by her teacher after she (the teacher) cuts the cake.

I don't think it evens works in theory. Punishment only deters behavior that you can control, and unintentional rule infractions cannot be controlled. Plus, people have an inherent sense of justice that causes them to get resentful when they're punished for something that wasn't their fault. In some kids, this resentment could lead to rebellion.

I believe in Zero Tolerance on Bullying.

That shit should NEVER be tolerated.

Zero Tolerance looks like one of those things that is designed to make politicians feel good, but which fails to actually solve anything. The High School that I attended is presently a fully-steel-barred school in which nobody can get in or out without permission. It is patrolled by at least one armed police officer at all times. It has a zero-tolerance policy. It has frequently flirted with banning "gang colors." It has teachers who I would describe as being roughly equivalent to university-level professors who really care.

It still has fistfights all the time and a poor academic reputation anyways.

EDIT: And if that sounds bad, there's a high school not more than 10 miles from me which also has metal detectors, and still has gang violence problems.

edited 3rd Jun '11 11:40:02 PM by ssfsx17

ZT is retarded in any form for the reasons ettina mentioned. Zero Tolerance was a dumb idea from the start.

- Anecdotal story incoming-

So I go to school in a country school about twenty minutes out of town and I do mean country. Kids do drive in on quads/snowmobiles as their regular mode of transport. So we are that hick. My friend has an axe in the back of his truck with the little leather flap on it and a ton of wood. He gets the suspension hammer for three days o.O

There was an attempt at introducing Zero Tolerance in schools in Poland. It failed miserably. Why? The people who tried this weren't very far from knowing the youth and the education systems and their idea of violence problem was based mostly on sensationalist news reports. Basically, they assumed that most of violence was by students against teachers (actually, it was and is mostly by students against students), that students often drink alcohol during classes (while it happened sometimes, students drink alcohol mostly after school) and that you should blame it (of course) on clothes, music and the internet. The solution was to search for drugs/alcohol/weapons when students entered school (never implemented because of huge backlash), create special schools for disobedient students with military and police personnel (never implemented because of backlash), uniformize students (implemented but the next goverment changed it; nowadays it's up to school to decide if they want uniforms) and, for some reason, add christian literature to the books that are mandatory to read (again, the next goverment changed it).

Now, here is one scenerio that happened at one of my schools:

A kid brings a toy gun into a school bus and threatens somebody with it as if it is a real gun. Should he get suspended immediately?

Zero tolerance only makes sense IF the people implementing it know the difference between "weapon" and "1 inch tall LEGO toy".

It would be easily fixed by simply saying that if, in the teacher/principle/other official's judgement, the item in question presents no reasonable threat and was brought with no ill-intent, then no punishment should be given other than confiscation of the item for the day.

That would deny them the defense of "I don't have to be reasonable, it's policy!"

Zero tolerance tends to fail badly due implention.
Examples:

• If you are bullied, you will get punished for breaking the "no violence" rule, EVEN IF it is self defence
• As mentioned, zero tolerance against toys? Really?
• The teachers do not follow the zero tolerance, and hence the entire point is moot.
  Zero tolerance fails IF it ignores external events, and usually they never implent it on the teachers side either. Meaning that it something that should never be implented.
  Now, if the teachers are forced to follow it, and external circumstances are not ignored, then it can be implented, and will most likely be reasonable.

I know that attitudes to guns differ wildly across borders, but in the UK it supposedly makes no difference whether the gun is real or not; one you threaten someone with it, you're committing a full crime (i.e. the person being coerced doesn't know that they're not in physical danger, so it's just as effective). School's out of its depth a bit there.

Isn't providing this defence the entire point of ZT? Without it, people can make excuses or look the other way in cases when they shouldn't. With it, they can defer responsibility for unpopular decisions to someone else. I think it's stupid, especially anything that encourages buck-passing, but it also looks like that's the whole point.

Quite frankly I see nothing good from a great many zero tolerance policies.

For example, I knew a guy when I first started high school who had a hunting rifle in his truck and yet he wasn't expelled or hurt anyone. Back then, knives were routinely in school (and yet knife fighting was nonexistent). Bullying was solved the old fashioned way (in my case by good old fighting). The key fact of all of this? This was not long after Columbine.

None of the ZT policies are better than how that was. Instead you persecute the guy with the rifle in his truck who goes hunting over Thanksgiving weekend, you take away the small pocket knife a guy uses to cut fruit at lunch, and worst of all you promote an attitude that women's groups told rape victims to do 30 years ago "just take it, it'll go faster" only transplant that to bullying.

How does that make for good society?

edited 4th Jun '11 7:19:55 AM by MajorTom

Zero Tolerance is an idea brought on by hysteria and laziness.

People want a solution to what they consider a dreadful problem. They want an EASY solution.

That makes for trouble.

Zero Tolerance doesnt work, really.

Its yet another policy all politicial stripes push because it makes them look "caring"

I think it was Bill Maher that once said "'Zero Tolerance' is synonymous with 'Zero Intelligence'", which I agree with.

Any system that actively tries to take common sense out of the equation is a bad system.

Yes, it is, and it is a bad idea. A zero tolerance policy on items that actually pose a threat to safety (including realistic toys) can be argued for. When that is used to say "sorry, we have no choice but to suspend you for bringing your 1/20 scale action figure to school" it is ridiculous. That choice needs to exist, and school officials need to be expected to choose correctly in these situations.

We should have a zero-tolerance policy for misguided stupidity by school administrations.

And the day after that policy, they announce that all but two schools in the country were closed for want of people to run them.

All Crimes Are Equal strikes me as bullshit overall.

I'm with Tom and Deboss. ZT takes away the ability to reason and determine how severe a punishment should be. The Toy gun example would be treated just as if he had brought it in and it just dropped out of his backpack. A teen with a joint would be treated the same as a teen with ibuprofen, even though one is being an idiot and the other is trying to lessen pain from something. Its taking a system which arguably doesn't work in criminal punishment and applying it to schools where it will just create animosity between students and faculty.

I also agree with Deboss.

At my school there is a zero-tolerance policy, and you're not even allowed to keep aspirin in your own locker. NOT EVEN YOUR OWN ASPIRIN. You have to bring it in a little orange container to the nurse and SIGN UP just so that you won't get your sorry ass expelled for "drug possession". Then if you're in pain, you have to go down to her to get it, even though it's really just much easier to pull one or two pills out of your pocket and go to the nearest water fountain.

And at my old school, random locker searches were really common. I'm pretty sure one happened about once or twice a month. It didn't stop the drug problems, though. About half the kids were high or tripping on something at any given time.

The old school district also had a zero-tolerance policy not just on guns, but on anything RELATED to guns. I remember one kid who was having a lot of trouble doing research for a project at school because his topic involved guns, and the school's censors blocked all the websites. I used to play "Soldiers" or something with some friends on the playground when I was younger, until the recess teacher said it was inappropriate to even put our hands in the shape of a handgun and pretend to fire at one another. So we started playing "Harry Potter" instead and made our own wands out of construction paper, and we had to explain to the staff again that wands =/= guns.

I know a boy who came to school in a Guns & Roses T-shirt. He was told to turn his shirt inside-out because the word "GUNS" is a danger to our youth.

Cell phones are also banned at the old school. If you have a cell phone in any place other than your locker during school hours, you get automatic after-school detention. No exceptions. This did not stop kids from using their cell phones, it just made them think of more ways to hide it.

In general, the Zero-Tolerance policy is a fail because, like Deboss said, not all crimes are equal. I think that a student who brings a real gun to school obviously must be sent home and subject to disciplinary action, but drawing a gun on a piece of paper is not dangerous to other students. I think the same goes for medications and drugs. Only the dangerous stuff should be banned from schools, but simple painkillers like aspirin really aren't that much of a risk, so I don't see why they're treated the same as morphine.

The solidarity widely diverse posters are showing in this thread fills my heart with rainbows and pastel ponies.

For sake of contrast, has anyone got an anecdote about ZT policies working well, even if only once and in highly specific conditions? I'm curious.

I could give anecdotes about lack of enforcement of any rule, or other evasions of holding somebody accountable.

Ah ha ha ha, no.

And I'm especially bitter since ZT managed to not only get me in trouble because some lied about me to the school resulting in a suspension that was cut short thanks to my parents slapping some sense in the principle but the people who started that lie in the first place got off scott free. Fuck zero tolerance.