"Zero Tolerance" a failure?

[kallend 2,175]

www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/education/seeing-the-toll-schools-revisit-zero-tolerance.html?google_editors_picks=true

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[weekender 0]

kallend

www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/education/seeing-the-toll-schools-revisit-zero-tolerance.html?google_editors_picks=true

interesting topic to discuss. IMO any zero tolerance policy is a bad idea. there are no exacts in the world. it would be better to allow managers to use their best judgement.

point of interest for me though. the reason for this article and the reason the NYT's and liberals care is in the first sentence that ends, "that especially affect minority students." no matter why that is, the policy is going to be deemed racist and must be dismantled.

maybe it should i dont pretend to know everything but its quite obvious why the NYT and the Obama admin doesnt like it. so i agree with them but for different reasons. or I'm racist but just got lucky on this one. stopped clock and all.

(edit to add: i just caught the irony in my second sentence. there are no exacts in the world except ALL zero tolerance policies are wrong. hah)

"The point is, I'm weird, but I never felt weird."
John Frusciante

[lurch 0]

About damn time. Of course, the assholes responsible for popularizing the whole idea put an entire generation of kids through hell, ruining countless young lives before acknowledging that maybe, just maybe, turning the schools into supermax prisons wasn't such a good idea after all...
"I've got an idea! Those kids are too defiant... let's take all the ridiculously draconian excesses of the drug war, stretch them to encompass ALL behavior including all sorts of things that AREN'T crimes outside the institution, and apply it to our kids!"

15 years later, half the kids think the grownups are out to get them by any pretext or excuse they can possibly invent, have no respect for rules and laws because the ones applied to THEM are capricious, arbitrary, malicious, spiteful and pointlessly, deliberately destructive, and the adults, baffled, wonder why...

"It's for your own good!"

"Destroying my life, treating me like a violent felon and giving me a criminal record for "posession of a "weapon" on school property" because I accidentally brought a butter knife to school in my lunchbox is, "For my own good"? Hows THAT supposed to work?"

Pretending a butter knife is a "weapon" and punishing the kids accordingly, (not to mention all the other manifestations of that set of policies) is the most overtly insane, hypocritical and unfair behavior I've ever seen from what are supposed to be institutions of order and learning.

It was somehow supposed to teach the kids respect for rules and authority. Any kid, if consulted, could have told them it would accomplish the exact opposite. When the grownups are pretending a butter knife magically morphs into a "weapon" when brought on to school grounds, only for the specific purpose of applying punishments for weapons to them, the kids logically conclude the adults are insane, and out to get them.

Adults have an institutional assumption that kids are pliable subjects for any and all experiments in extreme authoritarianism they can dream up, probably thinking so long as you get em young the kids will accept that as normal.

They are wrong.
When I was in school I thought the grownups were a bunch of idiots. Just after I got out of school when the "zero-tolerance" everything became policy throughout the land, they confirmed it. I felt like I'd escaped none too soon just before the prison gates clanged shut behind me leaving everyone else still in school, now in hell... under perpetual "lockdown"...

You reap what you sow... they haven't even BEGUN to pay the price for what they've done to the kids from the mid-90's through today. Frankly I'm surprised there haven't been more cases of kids coming back and getting a little payback, doing -real- violence to the teachers and administrators who inflicted this crap on them. So far as I'm concerned that entire systemic policy constitutes institutionalized child abuse.

I think there is a real need for the existence of something like a "Kids' rights advocate" to defend kids against authoritarianism run amok... except as near as I can tell the people running the system think kids HAVE no rights, treat them like property, and the idea that the kids need to be defended FROM them would outrage them.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[champu 1]

A couple quotes from the article that caught my eye...

Quote

In the past two decades, schools around the country have seen suspensions, expulsions and arrests for minor nonviolent offenses climb together with the number of police officers stationed at schools. The policy, called zero tolerance, first grew out of the war on drugs in the 1990s and became more aggressive in the wake of school shootings like the one at Columbine High School in Colorado.

...which really just demonstrates that administrators have no idea what they're doing. Violence associated with the drug trade and people with mental issues (sometimes exacerbated by bullying) shooting up a school are problems. Punishing any and all offenses severely and/or creating new offenses to punish not only doesn't help these problems in practice, but it doesn't even help on paper. This is the curse of "doing something" and why I cringe when I hear people demand it.

Risk aversion leads to becoming victims of your own knowledge base about what could go wrong. If you "do something" in response to everything that ever happens then before too long you find yourself doing nothing but the sum total of ineffective "somethings" and you have no capacity left to actually accomplish anything. In corporate buzz speak this is called "continuous process improvement."

Quote

Some view the shift as politically driven and worry that the pendulum may swing too far in the other direction. Ken Trump, a school security consultant, said that while existing policies are at times misused by school staffs and officers, the policies mostly work well, offering schools the right amount of discretion.

“It’s a political movement by civil rights organizations that have targeted school police,” Mr. Trump said. “If you politicize this on either side, it’s not going to help on the front lines.”

Sorry Mr. Trump [up charges]... dead wrong with a cherry on top. Zero tolerance policies, by definition, only come into play when you can't make a reasoned, discretionary argument for why you want to take an action. Also, if you find yourself casually referring to schools as "the front lines" you may want to reevaluate your choice of professions.

[lawrocket 3]

Damn straight zero tolerance is a failure. Because it fails those whom it is supposed to protect. "Zero tolerance" boils down to "Let's Capriciously Destroy Some Lives." A kid has a laser pointer? Suspend him for a year. A kid takes some aspirin at school for a headache? That's a ten-day suspension. A kid finds a pocket knife on a campus and turns it in? There's a week suspension. A kid gets jumped by five other ones during lunchtime? Suspend him for fighting.

"Zero tolerance" removes not only common sense from the equation but also has removed any inquiry at all regarding intent by the kids.

Of note is how this whole thing got started. The Guun Free Schools Act's 1994 Amendments state that each State receiving federal funds must have in effect a State law requiring local educational agencies to expel from school for a period of not less than one year a student who is determined to have brought a weapon to school.

Yep. Zero tolerance started as a gun control policy. Indeed, once there was zero tolerance for guns, it moved on to zero tolerance for knives, laser pointers, yardsticks, sporks, etc. Then it moved to zero-tolerance for drugs, which went from not tolerating coke, crack, pot and alcohol to aspirin, nasal spray, and multivitamins. Then to zero tolerance for violence (up to the person getting jumped and having the shit kicked out of him being suspended). Then zero tolerance for, well, just about anything.

Administrators love zero tolerance because it removes discretion. They don't need to make decisions. Some kid found a baggie of pills on campus and turned it in? Suspend her! She should have just reported it, in which case the suspension would only be a week for having knowledge of contraband.

It's gone from a noble goal to becoming draconian and achieving the wrong results.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[lurch 0]

Here's a documentary on the damage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaZ5W_Wkbx0

The War On Kids.

The kids aren't blind to the fact that all the hysteria and authoritarian enthusiasm for coming up with excuses for imposing maximum punishments for made-up "crimes" that weren't crimes 20 years ago, and aren't crimes the moment they get out of school is so much bullshit.

There is, as always, a great deal of handwringing on the part of adults involved with kids, about "How do we get them to stay in school and finish school?"

Call me Captain Obvious, here, but how about -not- making the schools a nightmare environment they're desperate to escape from where they're preemptively treated like convicts even though they've done nothing wrong?

I couldn't WAIT to drop out. Because I knew all the bullshit I had to live under, would instantly evaporate, become meaningless, and no longer apply to me the moment I was no longer an inmate of High School. All I had to do was quit, and go out in the adult world... and claim the same basic freedoms adults have. The same petty-minded punishment-happy admins, salivating at the chance to punish me for being caught with a cigarette, following me around hoping to catch me at it, suddenly rendered utterly powerless. Suddenly I can own anything sharp edged I want, and it isn't grounds for criminal prosecution... Suddenly there's nobody claiming the right to search my belongings with no due process... nobody acting as if use of swear words were a big deal... nobody claiming the right to dictate how I dress, or how I keep my hair... if I didn't like a job where those rules hold, I was perfectly free to walk out and choose to work somewhere else.

Over the course of my career I once found myself in a factory which enthusiastically created an authoritarian internal culture just like high school. Constant reminders to the employees that anything and everything is punishable and that we are watching you like a hawk for infractions.
I had just come from a factory in which I had the freedom of the place, almost no rules at all, and had enjoyed working there... a place where I wasn't being watched and judged every second by people waiting for a chance to impose some penalty for some petty infraction. So I made my own rules about dress, productivity, and punctuality, stuck to them, and earned all kinds of raises and awards for productivity.

When I got to this new factory, where changing anything required 10 years worth of engineering studies and approval from on high before being allowed to upgrade or fix so much as a sticky feed track, the employees were treated like 5-year-olds, and they started in with the authoritarian intimidation shit on me, being used to being treated as a free, self-responsible adult, I did NOT tolerate it. They'd try doing the ominous "You'll get a week off for that" shit, and I'd just fold my arms and stare at them like, "Really? What makes you think anyone intelligent enough to be an industrial automation mechanic is going to put up with this?"

I made them fire me in 8 weeks. Next factory, I got paid exactly the same, but once again, found one with freedom, almost no rules... and I am, once again, fantastically enthusiastic about being productive and contributing as much as I can to the place and they love me for it.
And I love the place. Nobody in my face. No authoritarianism at ALL. No pressure. I've become the facility's technical manager, upgrading the hell out of everything I lay my hands on. I rampage around fixing everything in sight, take breaks whenever I want, and the director, who has seen me in action, tells me they're lucky to have me.

The schools should take lessons.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

lurch

About damn time. Of course, the assholes responsible for popularizing the whole idea put an entire generation of kids through hell, ruining countless young lives before acknowledging that maybe, just maybe, turning the schools into supermax prisons wasn't such a good idea after all...
"I've got an idea! Those kids are too defiant... let's take all the ridiculously draconian excesses of the drug war, stretch them to encompass ALL behavior including all sorts of things that AREN'T crimes outside the institution, and apply it to our kids!"

15 years later, half the kids think the grownups are out to get them by any pretext or excuse they can possibly invent, have no respect for rules and laws because the ones applied to THEM are capricious, arbitrary, malicious, spiteful and pointlessly, deliberately destructive, and the adults, baffled, wonder why...

"It's for your own good!"

"Destroying my life, treating me like a violent felon and giving me a criminal record for "posession of a "weapon" on school property" because I accidentally brought a butter knife to school in my lunchbox is, "For my own good"? Hows THAT supposed to work?"

Pretending a butter knife is a "weapon" and punishing the kids accordingly, (not to mention all the other manifestations of that set of policies) is the most overtly insane, hypocritical and unfair behavior I've ever seen from what are supposed to be institutions of order and learning.

It was somehow supposed to teach the kids respect for rules and authority. Any kid, if consulted, could have told them it would accomplish the exact opposite. When the grownups are pretending a butter knife magically morphs into a "weapon" when brought on to school grounds, only for the specific purpose of applying punishments for weapons to them, the kids logically conclude the adults are insane, and out to get them.

Adults have an institutional assumption that kids are pliable subjects for any and all experiments in extreme authoritarianism they can dream up, probably thinking so long as you get em young the kids will accept that as normal.

They are wrong.
When I was in school I thought the grownups were a bunch of idiots. Just after I got out of school when the "zero-tolerance" everything became policy throughout the land, they confirmed it. I felt like I'd escaped none too soon just before the prison gates clanged shut behind me leaving everyone else still in school, now in hell... under perpetual "lockdown"...

You reap what you sow... they haven't even BEGUN to pay the price for what they've done to the kids from the mid-90's through today. Frankly I'm surprised there haven't been more cases of kids coming back and getting a little payback, doing -real- violence to the teachers and administrators who inflicted this crap on them. So far as I'm concerned that entire systemic policy constitutes institutionalized child abuse.

I think there is a real need for the existence of something like a "Kids' rights advocate" to defend kids against authoritarianism run amok... except as near as I can tell the people running the system think kids HAVE no rights, treat them like property, and the idea that the kids need to be defended FROM them would outrage them.
-B

Amen!

[DaVinci 0]

Yes, when you arrest a kid for a 2 inch toy gun... You have gone too far.

This is simply mission creep. We didn't want kinds bringing guns to school (rational) so they went so far that the suspend a kid for a pop tart that was kinda shaped like a gun.

In my day (I am not that old) if you were in a fight at school and you could prove you didn't start it, you didn't get into trouble. Today, everyone gets suspended.