Zero Tolerance

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

That is the link to the latest story about Zero Tolerance policies in schools going way too far. If you're too lazy to click on the link, it's about a six-year old who got a 60 day suspension. His crime? Being excited about having just joined up with Cub Scouts, the young boy brought his scout utensil to school. It is fork, spoon, and knife all in one.

I know our schools have become more dangerous lately. I know we've had to take further precautions since Columbine and and VA-Tech and other such shootings. But a six-year-old's scouting utensil? Really? I'm all for keeping our kids safe, but the boy is six years old.

This of course is on the heals of an elementary-aged girl whose grandmother sent a birthday cake to school along with a knife to cut it, and she got expelled. Her teacher waited until after she had used the knife to cut the cake to report it to the principal, of course.

I remember, back when I was in elementary school, we used knives to help carve a pumpkin, though that came to an end when one of my classmates cut herself. (Not before I'd had a chance to cut out one of the jack-o-lantern's eyes, thank goodness.)

When I was in high school, on of our security guards remenisced about how when he was in high school, he and a lot of other guys had guns on the back of their trucks, on school property, and nobody batted an eye. It's still that way in some of the more rural school districts.

Is it just me, or has school violence gone up since the banishment of said gun racks? Then again, I've also noticed that it's gone up drastically since the banning of prayer in public schools, as well. Call me old fashioned, but if we were to get rid of all this PC stuff in schools and start actually teaching instead of catering to every single child whose parents threaten to sue the school district at the slightest sign that their child might actually recieve an F for getting all the answers wrong on a test, doing their math problems wrong, etc, or for the fact that we simply can't stop every single bullying situation before it starts, no matter how much we try.... Well, then we might actually have some discipline in our schools and violence might go down.

I mean, teaching our students to respect one another as human beings is one thing. But we can't force them to be best of friends, and it doesn't exactly prepare our students for the real world, where life just isn't fair, and never will be.

Which leads me back to the situation that started this entire post. It is wrong to expect a six-year-old to understand the zero-tolerance policies of most schools to the point where he would know not to bring something as simple as the utensil that this particular little boy brought in. Most parents don't even realize how unreasonably strict these zero-tolerance policies really are. When I was in high school, we used toy lightsabers in a (admittedly low-budget, extremely amateur) recreation of a joust in my world history class. Now, if you bring in so much as a plastic sword from a pirate dress up set, something so obviously fake as that is, you can be expelled for posession of a weapon.

It's not just weapons, either. You can also be suspended or expelled for Banaca. Yes, that wonderful little breath freshener is considered posession of alcohol. And don't dare get caught with asperin, naproxen (Aleve), ibuprofin, or any other over-the-counter pain killer. Also included in the list of drugs would be cough syrup, a girl's birth control pills (though many schools are handing out condoms), other prescription medications, and asthma inhalers.

Oh yes. You read that last bit right. These days, in many school districts, if your child has asthma, they can not carry their own rescue inhaler. If they have an attack, they must somehow, amidst the painful gasping for air, ask permission from their teacher to go to the nurse, make it to the nurse, hope the nurse is actually in (especially as more and more school districts, in an effort to save money, go down to part time nurses), and ask the nurse for their inhaler.

This is not to say that it's impossible. It can be done. After all, at the Tony Awards a couple of years ago, Idina Menzel went into an asthma attack at the beginning of a performence of Defying Gravity, a song that takes an amazing amount of deep breathing because of long notes, especially at the end, and performed remarkably well, then got to her rescue inhaler after getting off stage. However, Idina, it should be noted, is a highly trained Broadway actress, and it would be highly unreasonable to expect the average student to make the trek to the nurse's office for their rescue inhaler.

So, my fellow educators and future educators, what do you think? Parents? Your opinion? Students? Your thoughts? Have today's zero-tolerance policies just g one too far?