I took note of an article which appeared in the Sacramento Bee and can be viewed on-line here. The article covers the news that a Delaware first grader who was suspended for 45 days from school for bringing in a cub scout spork (spoon + fork) to eat lunch with had his suspension overturned. The same school district had also expelled a 5th grade girl for bringing a serrated knife into school to cut her birthday cake with and had that suspension overturned as well. My significant other was livid after reading this article, declaring it the worst case of a lack of common sense she had ever heard about. While I agreed with her, I told her that sadly, I could understand how it happens. She looked at me like I was from outer space.
I explained that because of the inherent risk to the school of appearing negligent is just too high. If an injury happened to a child at the school at the hand of the child who brought the knife, or even at the hand of another child who takes the knife away and uses it, then the parents of the injured child can rightly claim that the school did not live up to its obligation to be diligent in protecting the safety of children entrusted to their care.
To that she responded, in effect, “B.S”. I agreed. This is a general problem that zero tolerance policies have in my opinion. By their very nature, they can not respond to a situation where common sense dictates a different approach. If you take the legal risk of a particular situation and insert a competent, experience school official into the mix, you end up with almost no risk of legal problems in the situation described in the article. However, if you instead insert a overworked, stressed, and under-trained school official into the situation, you end up with a lawsuit. It is a rule of situations like this that parents tend to behave irrationally when their children are placed at risk. Thus, the school official has to be well trained to deal with the situation to diffuse the emotion that naturally exists to let common sense prevail. All this is to say that I believe that zero tolerance policies are no substitute for training and good old fashioned hard work. But, this is probably something that I have to “walk a mile in the shoes of” a school official before I can really give an expert’s view. For now, I will just share an opinion.
As always, we are interested in your opinion.
#1 by Chuck - April 12th, 2010 at 20:25
So its an interesting question of scale. Not only is zero tolerance stupid, its self destructive in the long term.
Schools adopt zero tolerance policies because its “easier” to restrict access to things like pocket knives to everyone rather than to expel students who engage in violence. What is not acknowledged is that a student who has decided to be (or fails not to be) violent doesn’t need a knife to create injuries to others.
The only sensible way to address violence in school is to transfer students who are uncivilized into a school which limits the students rights. That way the students can learn that they earn their civil liberties by being civilized, they are not entitled to them. Students who show an ability to act in a civilized way are allowed to pursue their education at schools that don’t restrict what they must wear or carry when at school.
–Chuck