"Zero Tolerance" Still Means Zero Sense

The American Thinker has a post with which we are in complete agreement: the argument against "zero tolerance" policies. Zero Tolerance scores a zero, whether it's guns, drugs or whatever the subject may be.

The increasing enactment of these zero-thinking policies for 7-year-olds and other students are another sign that those in charge of education are in need of one that includes thinking skills. Examples are provided by the Thinker:

Just ask the 7-year-old in New Jersey who was suspended for drawing a smiling stick figure shooting another smiling stick figure with a gun. He reportedly also drew pictures of a skateboarder, a ghost, King Tut, a tree, and a Cyclops. These are still apparently not yet illegal acts of art.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, high school student Amber Dauge faced expulsion for accidentally taking a butter knife to school. She says that she ran out of the house to meet the bus while making a sandwich and when she realized she had the knife, she put it in her bookbag, and later left it in her locker at. A few weeks later, the butter knife fell out, fellow students saw it, a teacher intervened, and the over-reaction commenced. The knife was seized, Amber was suspended, and the process of expelling her from high school began.

Supposedly, the reason education administrators get the big bucks is because they have to exercise judgment. Zero-tolerance policies are like a color-by-numbers for those running the schools; i.e., there's not a lot of thinking involved. The losers? The usual ones, the kids.

Zero-tolerance policies haven't prevented one outbreak of violence in American schools. The policies have kept schoolchildren amazingly safe from butter knives, stick figures, plastic army men, and other kids who might make "bang" sounds while waving their fingers about on the playground. What they have also prevented is any outbreak of common sense among education honchos in charge of our schools' safety.

Zero tolerance continues to equal zero sense. It's something that administrators will talk about while deciding what traditional subjects to next chop from the curriculum. What's the chance zero tolerance policies will see a downturn in popularity among the educational elite without strong parental outrage?

About zero.

by Mondoreb
[image:imageandconcept]



Back to Front Page.

Classroom Assignment on Bestiality Will Spark Reactions Across The Spectrum

Ocean State scholastic object d'amore?

There might be concern about America's performance in the classroom in mathematics and science, but on the subject of bestiality, at least one Rhode Island school is at the top of the class.

A parent objected to her daughter having to write an essay on a book that included profanity and acts of bestiality. The girl, a freshman, her mother, the local school system's response all make for a telling story. More on assignments in bestiality in the classroom from Providence Journal:

A high school reading assignment that contains profanity and references to bestiality has angered a Cumberland parent so much she has complained to the superintendent, the School Committee and the state Department of Education. She wants the essay removed from the curriculum and the teacher disciplined.

So far, that hasn’t happened. Will Clarke, the author of the offending eight-page essay, “How to Kill a Boy That No One Liked,” doesn’t see what the fuss is all about.

Clarke, who has two novels published by Simon & Schuster, The Worthy: A Ghost’s Story (2006) and Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles: A Spy Novel (Sort of) (2005), says the essay is about his own high school experience in Shreveport, La., where he was a loner who was constantly picked on until he reinvented himself.

“It’s about a pivotal point in my high school experience when I won an election and stopped being a loser in people’s eyes,” the Dallas-based author said in a telephone interview.

“If anything, the essay is redemptive. That’s what literature does. It gets people to try on another person’s skin and see what it’s like,” he said. “It’s totally appropriate for high school kids.”

Lori Drew first saw the essay when her 15-year-old daughter, Amanda, a freshman at Cumberland High, brought it home as part of a homework assignment for a reading class early this month. The assignment was to read the essay and come up with as many questions as possible.

“I was shocked with the profanity and explicit sex acts with animals,” she told the School Committee last week as she handed out copies of the essay to members of the audience and the committee.

Superintendent of Schools Donna Morelle agreed to let Amanda opt out of the assignment and left Drew with the impression that the essay itself would be pulled.

But the assignment was never eliminated. The superintendent could not be reached to explain the apparent misunderstanding.

“She lied to me,” Drew said after the meeting.

Upon reading this story, parents will shake their collective heads, ominous music will play as keyboards tap out stories about the Power of the Religious Right in America and some will argue for the free interchange of discussion in the classroom. The familiar calls of "censorship" will be heard. Many of those voices will be the same ones who shout down the protests this story will generate,

Of course, others might take a shower and grab the latest issue of "Farm Digest".

by Mondoreb
& Little Baby Ginn



Back to Front Page.

Sexual Misconduct a Plague in US Schools--And Elsewhere

[image:jrwoodward]
by Mondoreb

Surprise!
Schools boards vote for contraceptives to be available to 11-year-olds in middle schools, any attempt at enforcing reasonable standards is met with an almost-instant lawsuit and sexual misconduct is a problem in schools? Who would have thunk it?

From CNN:

A young teacher in Iowa sheepishly admits that he fondled a fifth-grader's breast. But he doesn't lose his teaching license until one persistent victim and her family go public -- 40 years after the first accusation.

A middle school teacher in Pennsylvania targets a young girl in his class and uses the guise of love to abuse her sexually.

A teacher in Michigan, who'd already lost his license in another state, goes to prison after he films himself molesting a boy.

Along with the recent story of a child psychologist in NY being arrested for sexual misconduct, the above snapshots of individuals that children are supposed to trust are disturbing. Parents will demand better accountability, but the first step begins with better parental oversight of the things children see, watch and talk about at home. Another step will be taken when lawsuits diminish over the setting of standards and their enforcement.

Until then, it will be a circuitous problem. What behaviors beget what? And it's a problem that promises not to get better any time soon.





Back to Front Page.