zero tolerance

Read this

I actually laughed out loud when I first read this article. I completely agree with the point that there is no reason for a girl to get arrested because she wrote something on a desk. I think that in itself is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. The thing that made me laugh was that the people who are now outraged at this are the same people that pushed so hard for zero tolerance or completely shat on schools when something happened that they felt should have been forseen.

The whole idea of zero tolerance is pretty simple. These are the rules, if you break them (no matter how small the thing is) you broke them and you have to face a penalty. The thought that zero tolerance works for common sense is a silly thought, you make zero tolerance rules so that common sense (in fact thinking at all) doesn't come into play. Zero tolerance is taking things out of the hands of those who would have made the decisions before (in this case teachers).

I have a split thought on zero tolerance rules such as this. On the one hand I am a very literal person, you broke the rule you pay the price. That being said I think that me being a common sense person wins out in this case. The zero tolerance rules need to be taken out of use and the teachers (in this case) need to be trained on how to react to these types of situations to best represent the opinions of the school administration. The issue with this type of training is that it impossible to teach common sense. That's something that people have to learn on their own. Maybe a clear cut policy and the option to call in an administrator, department head, etc would work best?

I guess really what I think should happen is that, instead of adding all these zero tolerance rules, reduce the amount of rules you have for more quality rules and training for teachers and administrators so that they can properly enforce the rules. This goes the same for laws. Stop adding stupid laws and make the laws we have better. (what I am thinking of specifically in the case of law is stop locking up people for doing drugs(hurting themselves) and give harsher sentences to violent offenders (hurting others)) I know thats a lot of () sorry about that!

I will leave you with this quote from the above article
"There is zero intelligence when you start applying zero tolerance across the board," he said. "Stupid and ridiculous things start happening."

Thoughts?