Zero tolerance under the microscope

If you're interested in a roundup of tales of injustice resulting from school zero-tolerance policies, as well as a rogues gallery of school officials defending those policies even while discussing the aforementioned cases, check out this article from The Nogales International.

First, the troubling anecdotes:

Shannon, a 10-year-old, discovered at lunchtime that her mother had put a small paring knife in her lunch to cut an apple. Shannon realized that the knife might violate the school's zero tolerance policy, and turned it in to a teacher, who told her that she had done the right thing. Should Shannon have been disciplined?

Lisa was an honor student, a cheerleader, a Student Council member, a violinist in the school orchestra, an award winner at the school science fair and the recipient of high praise for a project in her honors history class. However, she violated the school alcohol policy by bringing a bottle of cherry 7UP with added grain alcohol to school. What should have happened?

David, an Arizona seventh grader, inspired by the movie "October Sky," a biography of NASA rocket scientist Homer Hickam, brought a homemade rocket made from a potato chip canister to school. The potato chip canister was fueled with three match heads. What result was appropriate?

In Pennsylvania, a 5-year-old wore a five-inch plastic axe as part of his firefighter's costume to a Halloween party. Should he have been disciplined?

A 6-year-old in Colorado Springs. Colo., was observed giving another student some "candy" with a brand that the teacher did not recognize. "It was not something you would purchase in a grocery store," said a district spokesman. "It was from a health food store." What was the proper course of action?
....

[A]s the 5-year-old Halloween firefighter found out, zero tolerance - even though it aims to protect students - can sometimes go overboard. The kid was suspended for bringing a simulated weapon to school. After firefighters around the country contacted the school to complain, the school officials composed an open letter to firefighters across the country stating that they never intended to offend firefighters by referring to the axe as a weapon. However, they defended the zero tolerance policy against weapons and simulated weapons as fair.

Even though Lisa, the honor student with the spiked 7UP, had never been to the principal's office for any disciplinary reason, she was assigned to five months in a military style boot camp. Had she been charged in juvenile court, she would have received a ticket and a fine.

David, the rocket-crazed seventh grader, was suspended for the the school term after the police were called and they classified the rocket as a weapon.

The 6-year-old who shared candy with his friend? Thinking that the candy may have contained drugs, the school administrators called an ambulance. The candy was determined to be lemon drops. Nevertheless, the kid was suspended for a half day.

And Shannon? The girl who turned in the paring knife her mother sent in her lunch box? She was expelled for bringing a knife to school in violation of the school's zero tolerance policy.

The defenses of zero tolerance range from, "gangs are bad, m'kay," to fretting over lawsuits resulting from disparate punishments meted out for similar offenses if teachers and administrators are permitted discretion. My favorite quasi-defense of zero-tolerance reasoning, though, comes from this little exchange between two administrators:

[W]here do you draw the line in schoolyard violence? Bejarano asked. What if a kid stands up to a bully? "I ask you to consider this," he said. "If you're out in public somewhere with your family and someone punches you in the face, are you going to go find help or are you going to stand up for yourself?"

"I wouldn't put myself in that situation to begin with," answered John Fanning, the president of Calabasas Middle School.

You wouldn't out yourself in what situation? Going out in public?

Overall, the school officials featured in the article come off as dominated by CYA bureaucratic timidity and wishful thinking about the image into which the world can be forced if the penalties for deviation are made sufficiently draconian.

Kids, of course, are caught up in the fallout from those fears and delusions.

But the problem is worse than just the immediate injustice visited upon isolated children. These children, and all of their classmates in the public school system, spend their formative years subject to a system of discipline that imposes ridiculously over-the-top punishments for minor and even unknowing transgressions, and that permits little leeway for mercy. Even such fundamentally natural acts as defending yourself from a bully can draw harsh penalties.

Existence year after year under such a regime can't help but shape the view of the world that inmates in the government-funded holding pends have of the world around them. At best, they learn that the law is something to be resisted and that authority figures are drones and thugs to be avoided at all costs. That's probably a valuable lesson in today's world, if it helps to raise a generation of instinctive anarchists who harbor abiding contempt for governing institutions.

At worst, though, the zero-tolerance system breeds serfs and snitches who live in fear of intrusive authority and seek favor by reporting each other for transgressions of the most mindless rules. If they carry that lesson with them into adult life--and at least some certainly will--just how well equipped are they to function in or maintain the trappings of a free society?

For now, I'll hope we're raising more anarchists than serfs.