Zero Tolerance or Zero Common Sense?
By Glinda
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.
October 15th, 2009 at 9:52 am
The fact that they even CONSIDERED sending him to reform school tells you how broken the system is. What on earth would that accomplish other than traumatizing the poor kid (and possibly putting him amongst some kids who would be all too happy to show him some other uses for that knife.)
I can understand wanting to level the playing field, but there is a huge difference between bringing a pocketknife to school (something that most of the boys did when I was young), and actually attempting to USE it on someone (which, of course, would warrant a very stiff punishment.)
October 15th, 2009 at 10:53 am
If the problem is discrimination, address that problem. It’s right to have the same rules for everyone; what’s wrong is to have the same STUPID rule for everyone.
October 15th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Count me in on the side of all of the above. Confiscate the thing, call his parents in, detention or maybe even suspension, but reform school. I’ll bet if they did send him he’d emerge with a whole new set of values and not the ones these fine educators had hoped for either. Talk about killing a flea with an elephant gun! Major FAIL!