| Plain Talk 10.22.09 |
By: Nicolle Crist, Guest Columnist
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Posted: Friday, October 23, 2009 2:15 pm
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One of the big headlines that left folks shaking their heads last week was the increasingly familiar story of a student who was suspended from school for the “technical” breaking of a Zero Tolerance policy.
A little boy from Delaware was suspended for 45 days and was told he would need to go to an alternative education school for bringing a fork, knife and spoon combo camping tool to school so he could use it to eat his pudding.
Another example of casting common sense aside rather than using it as the tool that it is?
It would be easy to decry the folks in the Delaware School system as incompetent - but I find it hard to believe that not one single person of the 2,000 plus people employed by the Christina School System has an ounce of common sense.
I don’t think that’s even statistically possible – so there must be some other reason why the school system acted the way they did.
As it turns out, there is another big reason, money. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s the philosophy of “Zero Tolerance” emerged from the Reagan and first Bush administrations’ world of federal drug policy and until relatively recently has worked its way into school policies for drugs, violence and weapons.
It emerged as part of the well intentioned Gun Free School Zones Act in 1993 and morphed into the Gun Free Schools Act in 1994. Money and the threat of withholding it from school districts who didn’t comply with the policy also entered the scene in 1994.
Over time, well-meaning legislators at all levels from both parties, expanded the definition of weapons to include knives and other items.
So now, a clearer picture emerges. A teacher or administrator who perhaps didn’t want to suspend a first grader for 45 days for something like this is now faced with either issuing the mandatory punishment or potentially losing funding for not complying.
Sadly, we’ve seen violence in schools for two decade now so it’s easy to suppose that in the eyes of an administrator – the choice is pretty straightforward.
Follow the letter of the law or face lost funding and possible blame if another seemingly harmless incident resulted in tragedy.
After all, an older student with bad intentions could have easily taken the tool, and used it for something other than pudding.
Luckily for Zachary Christie, the 6 year old in this latest incident – the local school board had the authority to amend its policy quickly and it did – but that certainly doesn’t mean case closed.
An amended policy in response to one specific incident is very different from allowing school boards to make these decisions on a case by case basis without the need for national attention and the collective “Are you kidding?” response from the American people to give them cover.
As it turns out, many students and parents are now coming forward and getting national attention for situations that are not as sympathetic as the first graders case.
One involves a 16-year old girl who was expelled for bringing a box-cutter to school. The student and her parents claim the box cutter was in her jacket because it was brand new – the store that they purchased it from must have accidentally dropped it into the jacket.
Possible? Sure – it’s possible, but it certainly doesn’t grab the attention of the morning show news viewers quite like a cute little 6 year old with a pudding spoon that happens to be attached to a camping knife.
This “all or nothing” philosophy has reared its head in other areas of our public life as well. Our criminal justice system is littered with “Three Strikes & Your Out” laws.
Zero Tolerance drug policy extends to Tylenol® in high schools. And certainly we are all familiar with the “You’re with us or against us” sentiment that infamously made its way into our foreign policy and ultimately war.
The head shaking, eye rolling lack of common sense on display in Delaware isn’t because the boy was punished, I would hope that most Americans agree that he broke the rules and there should be consequences.
The school faculty, or some other body should have been empowered to determine the punishment; 45 days in an alternative school for a 6 year old could have devastating consequences, but certainly some punishment was appropriate and having a process in place to deal with these types of cases could have avoided, what I’m sure was not a pleasant week at all for a 6 year old boy who just wanted to use his cool new tool.
Over 200 years ago we decided that we could govern ourselves. Among many other monumental decisions, we decided that we didn’t need a king to administer justice and punishment because we knew that neither was universal – at the time it was just about unheard of anywhere else in the world.
We seemed to have forgotten that today, and it feels like far too many aspects of American life are wrought with the idea that if you aren’t on my side, your are definitely wrong.
The “other side” is un-American, unpatriotic and down right evil and one-size fits all justice is now applicable even to school children.
Now I know that I am really stretching – but when you boil it down to salt – this story was not just about a little boy who wants to eat his pudding with a cool camping tool.
He is just a symbol of the fact that the “All or Nothing”, “With us or against us”, “Zero Tolerance” philosophy, regardless of intent, results in not only unintended, but counter-productive, results.
We have a system of self governance, a system to air grievances and an appeals process for a reason – its there because when it was designed, we knew that nothing is as cut and dry as it may appear.
It’s easy to forget that George Washington and our Revolutionary War heroes were seen as nothing more than insurgents by the British.
There are at least two sides to every story and as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it might do us a world of good to revisit our roots and remember our history.
Please feel free to share your comments and opinions by emailing me at nicolle.crist@gmail.com. |
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