Zero Tolerance For Common Sense

I am all for protection of our children while at school. It is very disheartening to read of school shooting and other acts of school terrorism’s that recent times have reported. I was saddened when my nine year old granddaughter reported they had drills in her school to practice what to do in the event a person with a gun came into the school to shoot them. But,km that being said, it seems as if in our zeal to protect we have become zealous to the point of ridiculous. I am referring to the zero tolerance policies many schools have adopted with regards to weapons, drugs, and sexual activity. Zero tolerance means facts without explanations. In my opinion zero tolerance is Un-American. It is guilty regardless of proof of innocence. Thank goodness our courts have not adopted a zero tolerance policy. Below are some examples, just to prove how far we have gone.

• Fifth-graders in California who adorned their computers with tiny toy plastic soldiers to support troops in Iraq were forced to cut off their tiny little weapons.
• “A 13-year-old student in Orange County, Fla., was suspended for 10 days and could be banned from school over an alleged assault with a rubber band…” “Robert Gomez, a seventh-grader at Liberty Middle School, said he picked up a rubber band at school and slipped it on his wrist.”
• “Two boys, ages 9 and 10, were charged with felonies and taken away from school in handcuffs, accused of making violent drawings of stick figures.”
• “The boys were arrested Monday on charges of making a written threat to kill or harm another person, a second-degree felony. The special education students used pencil and red crayon to draw primitive stick figure scenes on scrap paper that showed a 10-year-old classmate being stabbed and hung, police said.”
• VA: Joyce Heath said her 8-year-old son returned to school yesterday after a seven-day suspension for carrying a butter knife to school with his lunch. Nicholas, a third-grader, initially was suspended for 10 days and faced the possibility of being placed in disciplinary classes for a year.”
• A Texas school district tried to expel a 16-year-old high school student for a year when a butter knife was spotted in the back of his pickup truck.
• Wisconsin: A sixth-grader gets suspended because of a science project. The project involved cutting an onion. He brought a kitchen knife to school.
• Missouri: It is just a month after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. A fifth-grade student draws a picture of an airplane flying into a building and was suspending.
• A third-grader has a brother serving in the Army in Afghanistan. The proud third-grader draws a picture of his brother at his sit stand desk in his elementary school classroom. The drawing shows his brother, a United States Army soldier, with a gun. Suspended.
• Seven fourth-grade boys in Centennial, Colo., were sent home from Dry Creek Elementary School for pointing their fingers at each other like guns in a game of army-and-aliens on the playground.
• A Florida high school student tape recorded a chemistry lecture against school policy. Was she reprimanded and sent back to class with a stern lecture? NO! She was criminally charged under the state Wire Tap law.
• Schools are banning dodge ball and tag because the games encourage “violent behavior.”
• Elementary students in Texas and Louisiana have been suspended for pointing pencils and saying “pow” and drawing pictures of soldiers. A fifth-grader in St. Petersburg, Fla., was arrested for drawing pictures of “weapons.”
• “Terrorist threat” criminal charges were filed against two 8-year-olds in Irvington, N.J., for “playing cops and robbers with a paper gun.”
• 6 year old tossed out of school for bringing in his father’s pager for show and tell. It seems it’s classified as drug paraphernalia.
• A Boy Scout (excellent ‘A’ student) returning from camp was suspended from school because he left his ax and knife in his car along with the rest of his camping gear.
• An 11 year-old girl was suspended for 10 days from Garrett Middle School in Atlanta. It seems that the (10 inch ‘bead type’) chain connecting her key ring to her Tweetie Bird wallet was in violation of the school’s “Weapons Policy.”

You decide. I think common sense lost out in these examples. What is next, burning all the books that have a fight, or a joint, or a nipple in them? Parents should be concerned. What message are we sending here? Personally I think it is all very scary.

“So it is written so shall it be”