Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the burning of the school
We have tortured every teacher
We have broken every rule
We have shot the secretary
and we hung the principle
our troops are marching on
Glory glory hallelujah
teacher hit me with a ruler
…
Am I just crazy or does it seem like these zero tolerance policies are applied to boys more often then they are to girls? I could be wrong but it seems to me that the majority of cases I hear about involves boys and not girls.
Marc
My 9 year old knows this one by heart. If she were awake I’d get the last verse for you. So, ya, this one’s still making the rounds.
(to the tune of the Marines Hymn)
From the School of Arts and Sciii-ences
To the classrooms by the Mall
We will burn and bomb and desss-ecrate
Till our mob’s destroyed them all
We’re not Weathermen or raaa-dicals
We have never screamed or yelled
This is just our way of maaa-king sure
That exams will not be held!
(no idea of the tune)
We broke up, we broke up,
We don’t care if the school blows up.
No more english, no more french,
No more sitting on the old school bench.
If the teacher causes trouble,
Box her ears & give her double.
If that does not do the trick,
Dynamite will do it quick.
I used to draw pictures of guns & knives & mushroom clouds (& claws drippig blood too), but I went to a nice, refined all-girls school in England back in the 80s, so obviously it was alright 
That’s my girl! 
Getting rid of zero tolerance policies is child’s play (so to speak). All that is needed is the following:
[list=1]
[li]Any parent who says, “My precious life got three days’ suspension for doing X, but Billy Smith only got two days for the same thing, so I’m going to sue the secondary sex characteristics off anyone even remotely related to his case”, will be shot out of hand.[/li][li]Any parent who fails to vote in a school board election will be horsewhipped and made to wear a cangue for one month.[/li][li]Anyone who says, “Well, I saw it (whatever ‘it’ is) coming, but I didn’t want to rock the boat by speaking up”, will be deprived of all political rights for life.[/li][/list=1]
When that has been done, we’ll discuss the matter further.
Caught her in attic
with a loaded automatic
She ain’t my teacher no more
This is the way it ended in my school (80’s). Very cathartic, and noone ever got shot. Is ZT causing the very normal anger/frustration kids experience in schools to be pent up, resulting in possibly more violence?
Deck the halls with gasoline falalala lala la la
Strike a match and watch it gleam falalala lala la la
Watch the school burn down to ashes fa lala lalala la la la
Aren’t you glad youplayed with matches? falalala lala la la
Amazingly enough, my high school still stands…to this very day!!!
We’d sing that song in the cafeteria like a choir. The thought of twenty of us being carted off to jail is depressing. What the fuck would that have taught us?
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Teacher hit me with a ruler
Hid behind the door with a loaded .44
And there ain’t no teacher anymore
Zero Tolerance has the potential to actually create criminals the way I see it.
What’s going to impact you more negatively, drawing violent pictures or being dragged out of your school in handcuffs in front of everyone?
If you give someone the identity of a criminal, that’s what he’ll be.
— G. Raven
Hell, when I was in HS in the 70’s, (Southeast Tx) a lot of people carried .22’s or shotguns in the gunrack in their pickup. Never heard a word about it, except for some teachers asking if we shot any squirrels or rabbits.(which is what we used them for.)
Imagine THAT today.
*Mine eyes have seen the glory,
of the burning of the school.
we have trampled every teacher,
we have broke the golden rule,
we went into the office,
and we hung up the principal,
upon the old flag pole!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
teacher whacked me with a ruler.
Bopped her in the bean,
with a rotten tangerene,
her teeth came marching out…*
How about this: I was always the silent, outcast, picked-upon and beaten-up one in primary and middle school; in high school I was the silent, outcast, ignored one… and so I was one of the students the administration kept an eye on. Because of my past I was a target not only for the students but for the administration! I was questioned about a bomb threat once, just because they knew I was the outsider. Of course, that all changed after I won my Merit Scholarship, but it’s still infuriating: the final straw.
I believe Gunslinger was questioned, possibly chastised, in high school after Columbine, because he wore a black trench coat. That happened to several kids at my school, including my friend Aaron.
Last fall someone discovered “threatening” graffiti (the words “[school name] SUCKS” with an explosion and a mushroom cloud coming out of them) in the boys’ bathroom, and the student they decided did it was given out-of-school suspension for two days, in-school for a week, and was lectured by the police.
To continue the hijack: Never knew any of the songs y’all are singing, although my best friend and I did write our own parody of a Garth Brooks song with the same theme. (I can’t remember it for the life of me.)
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Teacher hit me with a ruler
Met her at the bank with a US Army tank
And she ain’t my teacher anymore
Indeed. Here’s a little old story (which I’ve taken from a science fiction novel by S.M. Stirling, actually):
Now, sure–rationally speaking, there is a difference between being carted off in handcuffs, publicly humiliated, and expelled from school (for, say, writing Moody Angst-Ridden Teenage Poetry) on the one hand, and what will happen to you if you actually shoot up a school. There isn’t really a “permanent record” from grade school, even high school, and that sort of stupid shit will doubtless blow over and you will be free to find another school and go on to have a good and happy life. Whereas, if you actually shoot a bunch of people, the police will kill you, or else, if they take you alive, you will go to prison for the rest of your life.
However–the distinction between “They carted me off in handcuffs and expelled me from school–My life is ruined!” and “The SWAT team is closing in–My life is ruined!” may be just a little bit too fine to get across to Moody Angst-Ridden Teenagers, especially if we’re talking about decisions made on the spur of the moment and without time for a lot of careful reflection.
Freedom of speech is reason enough to oppose this bullshit, but another reason is that we really, really need to preserve a nice wide gap between the consequences of casual talk and the consequences of actually hurting people.
Notice handed to me today by my daughter from Dr. Young, district 13 superintendent.
Dear Parents and Guardians:
Recently there have been reports in the media concerning sexual misconduct among students in the New York City public schools. Students have been arrested and received youthful offender’s designation/record.
Principals have been instructed by the Chancellor to report all incidents of sexual misconduct to the police, regardless of the age of the students. We can avoid these severe measures if school staff and parents emphasize the importance of refraining from any physical contact with other students. It is warm and the school year is almost over. As a result, the students are more boisterous, more restless, and more playful than usual. Nevertheless, the hitting, touching, slapping, bumping, ect. must not occur.
Therefore, I am appealing to all parents and guardians to make sure that our children understand the seriousness and the consequences of any actions that can be characterized as sexual misconduct.
If you have any questions, please contact the Principal of your child’s school.
Thanks for your cooperation.
[Italics mine. Bolding and underlining from original.]
My children tell me that both their schools had a special assembly outlining what was no longer acceptable behavior. No touching. At all. When they told me this yesterday I thought they were exaggerating. The school district is very serious about this. No touching. In my daughter’s school they are going as far as having the teachers escort the children from one class to the other to make sure the boys and the girls stay on their respective sides of the hallway.
This is fucking ridiculous. If the school can’t enforce the no slapping and hitting rule (it was always there, right? And yet fights happen all the time) how are they going to stop all that touching those nasty teenagers like to do?
I’m waiting for the full body armour directive.
Damnit, that’s horrible. The school is effectivly saying “We know you animalistic boys will rape these girls the second we turn our backs!” And no touching? No playing red rover or ring-around-the-rosy? No hugs? No styleing each other’s hair or reading each other’s palms at lunch or feeling to see if a friend has a fever or squeezing a shoulder in a silent show of support or playing patty-cake varients or tag or helping someone up if they have fallen to the ground?
We have to find a way to fight fire with fire, I am afraid. Fear of lawsuits is driving all this BS, and only fear of lawsuits will stop it. Someone is going to have to sue using the arguement that their child faced emotional distress because in the middle of a crisis their best friend couldn’t hug them. As my husband points out, if the concern is a “hostile enviroment”, what enviroment is more hostile than one when simple human contact is banned and branded with the label of sexual misconduct, where you can’t pat a friend on the back because you might be sexually abusing them and not even know it?
I’m really mystified. What’s wrong with the parents? Why don’t they stand up and demand that the schools eliminate these idotic policies? Don’t they realize that their own child could be the next victim?
On the highway yesterday (spent about eight hours on the road), I found myself supporting zero tolerance just a bit. The radio news was reporting on a teachers’ strike in the Bay Area. Well, there are allegations that some of the striking teachers were keying peoples’ cars. And one of the striking teachers interviewed admitted to physically restraining a substitute teacher from crossing the picket line into the school.
Let’s see…if a student assaults another student or a teacher, the student gets expelled. Hey, looks to me like one teacher just got fired!
Well, that’s the way it would be if zero tolerance really were fair.