As reported in the Northwest Herald, a student has been suspended from school and charged with disorderly conduct for writing an essay with “nonspecific references to violence.”
Last week during a drive to North Carolina I listened to an audiobook version of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five,” a book I’d always meant to read. The recent death of the author brought it to my attention again. So it goes. I bring it up because I recall some students at my own high school, over twenty years ago, talking about it as assigned reading in an English class. That book has some pretty specific references to violence and some coarse language to boot.
Also mentioned in the article is that the English teacher in this particular case had apparently said it was okay to use foul language in the assignment. That doesn’t suggest that the teacher was expecting, for example, a rosy puff piece about a Beloved Leader.
The part that scares me the most was this quote from the story: “‘You can never be overly cautious with any type of these situations,’ [Cary Police Chief Ron] Delelio said.” Thank goodness I don’t live in his town. I can’t imagine what I’d ever write that wouldn’t raise red flags based on that standard and still be worth reading. If you can’t be overly cautious, perhaps they should simply outlaw writing altogether.
The Muscatine Journal reports on a student expelled from school for the rest of this year and half of next for bringing an Air-soft pellet gun to school to show his friends. The police took a look at it and declined to arrest the boy (this time the police are on the side of sanity, at least,) but the school has expelled him anyway.
Now the school district is working with the parents to figure out how to continue his education despite the expulsion. Don’t worry, though, taxpayer money will cover the costs for, say, homeschooling assistance. I guess the idea of giving him three days of in-school suspension and getting him back to his studies was out of the question?
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.
Now that I understand the basics of the process of adding to this blog, I want to expand on it by adding additional contributors. I would like to get to where there is at least a new post every day, but I know that I can’t do this entirely by myself.
If you think that you might want to contribute, even occasionally, please email me directly at overton@zerointelligence.net and I will provide you with contributor access. Posts by new contributors will not be automatically posted, but will require editorial oversight until a contributor has “proved” himself through consistent quality posts.
Help make this site’s voice louder and consider active participation. It’s not that hard and has an effect on an important topic. I hope I’ll be hearing from many of you very soon.
PassablyNews.com reports on Hempfield Area High School’s investigation of a bomb threat worthy of the Keystone Kops. They had the time, date, and phone number of the bomb threat, called in to the student hotline. Follow it back, and you have Cody Webb, a 15-year-old student, who was arrested and put in a juvenile detention center.
The call was made on March 11 in the wee hours of the morning. The school forgot about Daylight Savings Time until they figured it out twelve days later, after which Cody was released and charges were dropped.
On March 20, a few days before Cody’s release, the school established a new policy that blocks incoming calls that don’t have caller ID information. Good thinking, Hempfield Area! Once those people that want to bomb your school realize they can’t call in the threat anonymously, they’ll be forced to either call in and identify themselves or give up on bombing you altogether.
This may not be a case of zero tolerance, but as tipster Henry Cate said in his email to me on this subject, it’s a pretty classic case of zero intelligence.
The Associated Press reports on a ruling by the Indianapolis Court of Appeals that a student’s rants about a school principal on her MySpace page were political speech and ruled in her favor versus the school. Considering the number of MySpace stories we’ve had of late, largely stemming from the apparent absence of clear direction from the courts about jurisdiction, this is an interesting development that may have some long term effects on the viability of zero tolerance policies around speech-related offenses.
Thanks to David for the tip. If you have a tip, please email us at tips@zerointelligence.net.
Louise Benson, MD has been a regular reader of this site since her own experience with a Zero Tolerance policy gone wrong in conjunction with her son. Many of the incidents described in this site are further referenced in the book.
Please support Dr. Benson’s efforts (and incidentally, support the continued operation of this site) by buying a copy of her book using the link presented here.
She wrote the word “Okay” on her desk. She is thirteen years old and was removed from the school in handcuffs by police officers. WCBS-TV has more details.
Graffiti applied to school property is not okay. Tackling problems like graffiti have a good track record in lowering overall crime levels. New York City, where this incident took place, knows that better than most places in that sending police after graffiti vandals and fare-beaters in the subway system had a very positive effect in bringing down other crime. In essence, showing that even low-end crime will not be tolerated appears to convince those that would commit more serious crimes to think twice or at least take it somewhere else.
The key, though, is consistency and appropriate response. For example, putting this girl on publicly visible clean-up duty and handling it that way every time would be much more effective than an unusual and overblown response just this one time. This response just makes the administration seem crazy rather than holding a reasoned respect for rule of law coupled with a desire to educate.
The Baltimore Sun reports on a new initiative designed to improve safety in the public schools of Baltimore. As noted in the article, Maryland’s five most dangerous schools are in Baltimore.
The good news is that the city isn’t simply jumping on the zero tolerance bandwagon:
At the same time, advocates from groups including the Open Society Institute have been pushing for in-school suspension programs and other suspension alternatives. They say that allowing violent or misbehaving students to be on the streets during school days only perpetuates crime, drug use and other social ills.
System officials - who included $700,000 for in-school suspension plans in middle schools in next year’s budget - said they want to get away from a zero-tolerance policy mandating automatic suspension or expulsion for fighting in school.
Recognition that zero tolerance policies push the problems out onto the street is an important one. Would that more local governments would think through their policies so carefully.
