Comes in pink or blue for even the youngest Grim Reaper fetishist.

(via Etsy seller beebles)

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the recent case of six year old Zachary Christie, who ran afoul of his school’s zero tolerance policy for knives on campus when he brought his Cub Scout eating utensil to school.  The utensil included a fork, a spoon, and of course, a knife.

Zachary was instantly pulled from school, and a hearing was set to determine if he should spend forty-five days in reform school, as was the punishment outlined in the zero-tolerance guidelines.  The School Board decided to make the policy a bit more lenient in cases dealing with kindergarteners and first graders.

I have never been a big fan of any of the zero tolerance policies that school districts have recently enacted.  It seems to me that each incident should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis rather than a one-size-fits-all mentality.

But then in the article I linked to above, it was stated that the policies were enacted in part to reduce discrimination in cases like this, as evidence had shown that African-American students were being punished more harshly than their peers.  The policy was meant to level the playing field, so to speak, so that everyone caught would face the same consequences.

That did make me pause for a bit.

But, I still don’t like the idea of zero tolerance. 

And what I really don’t like even more is that we have to have such draconian measures in place because there are still people  in authority positions in our educational system who discriminate.