The Inevitable Call for Zero Tolerance: Virginia Tech Backlash
As soon as I heard about the recent shootings at Virginia Tech, I knew there were going to be some people that would jump at the chance to call for more zero tolerance policies (as well as more gun control and other compromises to civil liberties in general.)
Jason Wittman, MPS, got right on it. Mr. Wittman is living in an alternate reality, one where the imposition of strict rules immediately modifies behavior purely for the better and no one ever abuses those rules to forward his own agenda.
Zero tolerance policies drive those that would work ill upon their fellows to simply be more clandestine in their activities. They cast a wide net that then picks up kids acting as kids. Possession of weapon-shaped toys, unintentional or minor violations of rules, and the necessary process of learning social mores are punished blindly and equally harshly to truly criminal behavior. Administrators under pressure to raise school test scores use these policies to weed out the “undesirables,” kids who don’t have the right grades, income, or skin color.
Hand-wringers like Mr. Wittman are likely to be secretly thrilled at the Virginia Tech massacre, granting them a new bugbear, a college-level Columbine to which they can point, shouting, “See? See? We are not safe!” They shout this even as schools become far safer.
Don’t let Mr. Wittman and other knee-jerk reactionaries push an unnecessary and harmful agenda of zero tolerance policies in an impossible and unrealistic pursuit of the abolishment of all discomfort from youth. We need an intelligent approach to school discipline and to allow our children to learn how to deal with adversity while they are still children and the consequences are low.
I was in sixth grade when Columbine hit.
I was in eight grade when 9/11 hit.
I went through high school at the height of the zero tolerance fallout from these events. Frankly, what scared me shitless was NOT that it could happen where I was. What scared me and my peers was the administration’s reaction to, well, anything.
I’m finishing up my freshman year at a state college in NY when VTech hits. Am I worried that it will happen here? Not really, mostly because I know a good half the students here are armed in varying capacities in the first place. Do I have reason to fear the administration, which already has zero tolerance policies? Damn straight I do.
Forget the terrorists overseas, by the definition of terrorism, school administrators are terrorists in this day and age.
dead linky.
There are also those saying just the opposite — if everyone (or, at least, many) had handguns themselves, the shooter would have been stopped much sooner.
Andy,
You’re a pretty good writer; probably better than Jim.
Your new look to the site is an improvement.
If you want to achieve your goal of readership and quite possibly winning hearts and minds, here’s something to consider:
Your article above is extremely one-sided and gives precisely zero credit to the other side. The reason we have policies like zero-tolerance is this: There is a reasonable debate about a problem and a good solution hasn’t been found. You would do well to speak to the content of Mr. Wittman’s article, rather than just ridicule it here. He does an exceptional job of analysis of the problem and the possible collateral issues that surround the problem. I was that kid in high school, too, and he’s dead accurate in his analysis. But, as soon as he offers solutions to the problem, he takes a left turn (and I do mean ‘left’). Educators have a tendency to be leftist and his solution set fits a liberal world-view nicely. Zero-tolerance fits a leftist wold-view as well. I would guess that most of the folks that read and enjoy this site are conservative politically.
Please understand, I only suggest this in an effort to help. Were I writing your article, I would have given Mr. Wittman credit for an excellent analysis and then laid bare his politics and liberal view-point. The problem with his solution, and all lefty solutions, in my own personal opinion, is that they almost never take personal responsibility into account. There needs to be someone else to blame or a system to be held accountable for how you feel or how you act.
When I was that kid in high school, it would have been really awesome to have a mentor take me aside and teach me hot to not be such an ass. The reason I was ‘that kid’ was 90% my own doing whether I knew it or not. I suspect it is much the same for all of these kids. Rather than a system that penalizes everyone else for how they feel, perhaps a swift kick in the ass and a hug and a handshake would do better for the afflicted. Just sayin’.
g
(It’s Aaron, actually, but that’s okay!)
You’re right in that I didn’t really give him any creedence. Frankly, that’s probably because he really annoyed me. (I’m smiling as I say that.)
In my own school days, I took all kinds of hassling. I’m not sure it ever really ends in that the other day when I chaperoned a school trip by my daughter’s third grade class, the kids kept trying to take my baseball cap, just like my peers would when I was in school. Kids do that and learning to cope with bullies is part of the process of growing up.
The public schools in my area (Montgomery County, Maryland, by the way) are pretty good. They have a “DEBUG” rule for dealing with bullying that I like. On the other hand, they constantly ask kids, “Are you making a good choice right now?” which I find irritating because kids don’t get the question - what they hear is what’s really meant: “Stop that!” I wish they’d just tell the kid what they were doing that was wrong and what they should do instead. Calls for zero tolerance for bullying, taunting, and so on is completely over the top and in keeping with an envisioned utopian society dependent on a benevolent nanny state. Pure fantasy.
Wittman came across as an insufferable whiner and I had a really hard time seeing past his call to have the government (in the form of the school administration) step in and try to make everyone be nice to each other.