Actually, I was just reading the other day about how the Alameda County Board of Education had passed a resolution that all school faculty/administration should “implement programs to combat verbal abuse.” This sounds like a decent idea until you discover that the Board’s definition of ‘verbal abuse’ includes “acts of sarcasm, harassment, blaming, judging, criticizing, threatening, [and] name-calling.” Now, this just blows my mind.
It’s just as I’ve always feared. Acts of sarcasm lead to violence. And, shockingly, have become so commonplace that they’ve become accepted. Keep that in mind the next time you go to make a witty remark.
Eeesh… This zero tollarance stuff is getting insane. Lemon drops are a drug? A model rocket as a weapon?? (“Hey, look, Timmy! I’m going to shoot down that commercial 747 with my B-cell rocket!!”). I’m glad I graduated when I did…
Of course, it was already kicking in when I graduated ('98). If they’d have looked in my binder, I probably would have gotten canned. Could have happened, too, at one point my backpack was held by the police as possible evidence (Not -just- my backpack, several others were, but they had good reason for it…). Let’s see, what all did I have in there that day… Drawings of at least a half-dozen firearms (Most fictional). A story I’d started the day before, where the main character, a SWAT officer, is killed on the first page (He, um… Comes back :eek: ). I think I had a couple drawings of some demon-like critters, too. I’d have probably gotten expelled on the spot. I know a couple people who were suspended or forced into counceling because someone said they threatened them but they didn’t.
I’m firmly of the opinion that it’s making things much, much worse. You have kids shooting up the place because they’re feeling like their life is too hard and they’re too oppressed? Why, they must need more rules to keep them in line! :rolleyes:
I invite any and all ZT zits to the woods by the swimming hole to have a good old fashioned bb gun fight. I promise to aim at nothing but the whites of their eyes.
I remember attending an elemertary school which could be said to be ahead of it’s time policy-wise. I would be hauled up to the office and subject to a severe verbal thrashing for using the word “gun” in a sentence. Context didn’t matter. There was something in their student conduct code about threats on other students, and they chose to interpret any mention of violence as a threat.
[hijack]
Strangely enough, the only offence that a hyperviolent, obviously dangerous individual like myself has committed in high school was trying to slip into Senior Day (basically an excuse for the soon to be graduates to get out of class and congregate on the football field for the day) my sophomore year. I wanted to spend it with my girlfriend, was that so wrong? Their reaction was almost amusing. They behaved as though I had urinated on a bible.
[/hijack]
[sarcasm]
I wonder if Drama departments at schools with these policies have to abide by them, as well. Can they not do Romeo and Juliet, because the action includes swordplay, not to mention suicide? If so, that probably rules most of Shakespeare out. I wrote a story for Creative Writing this year (I can post it, or a link to it, if anyone wants to read it) involving, amongst other things, an ancient legend which proved all to true, a huge, suicidal last stand in orbit around a helpless world, and a character with a less than stellar past. Clearly this unsettled other students. I’m lucky I wasn’t suspended. [/sarcasm]
Actually, the “little old story” that you mention, MEBuckner, is also related by Larry Gonick in almost exactly the same words. I don’t that one has plagiarized the other, though; I think that both are relating the pravda on the fall of the Ch’in dynasty.
And from another outcast, i would always draw tornadoes, with little broken houses, scattered on the ground, with vaguely injured-looking stick figures.
Sarcasm leads to violence? Then the members of this board must be the most dangerous people on the planet.
Speaking of violent school songs, during an Xmas pageant in, I believe, 5th grade, my friends and I re-wrote the second half of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:
Then one foggy Christmas Eve,
Rudolph got an axe (Hack! Hack! Hack!)
And the blood ran oh-so bright,
As he got revenge that night.
Then how the reindeer feared him,
As they tried in vain to flee.
Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer,
You’ll go down in history! (Like Manson!)
Probably would have gotten in trouble if anyone could have heard us over the other twenty kids singing the correct lyrics.
Sadly enough my high school, the beautiful, old New Rochelle [NY] High School was burned to the ground about 30 years ago by some kids who were fooling around by starting fires in waste baskets.
However, I agree with you all that zero tolerance is horrendous.
From some of the “zero tolerance” crap I’ve read, I probably would have spent most of my high school years suspended. Why? I wrote stories for the school lit. magazine that include death, homes being destroyed, elderly abuse, classism and <gasp> a very liberal dose of sarcasm…
You see, I re-wrote fairy tales. * The Poor Wolf and Big Bad Red Riding Hood; Hansel, Gretal, And the Old Woman With The Car; The The Three Bears And The Homeless Girl; The Three Pigs and Elvis* and everyone’s favorite * Snow White And The Seven Deadly Sins. *
On my person at any given time were countless other stories, some horror, some parodies- like Barney as a talk show host- all of which would be looked badly upon by ZT policies. (want to read how “violent” they are for yourselves?) In the eyes of ZT I probably would have grown up to be a terribly violent criminal, maybe even killed a few dozen of my classmates. I should be in jail right now.
<adjusts halo> All I’ve ever gotten was a single speeding ticket. <shrug>
Ooh, that reminds me of one I did for one of my english classes, one of the first stories I wrote… A horror story. Everyone dies, little bit of shooting (Near the end, when the main character is in near-panic), lots of creepy stuff. Even made it into my Junior-year Paragon (I think that’s what it was called). One of my teachers liked it so much, she asked me to enter it, and there it was, in printing, halfway through my senior year. Kinda neat…
If I’d have written it even just a year later, I woulda gotten expelled…
Though that sounds like an interesting story you wrote, I for one would be glad to read it
We (there were about 5 of us) were questioned, harassed, investigated, illegally searched, and made to go without raincoats by the local police until one guy (whose dad is a detective on a neighboring town’s PD and knows the rules about such things) threatened to sue. They stayed away from us after that.
The school cop, let’s call him Officer Bob (because that’s his name), had a grudge against us before all this started, BTW. That’s why he started it, in fact–he didn’t like us (well, the feeling was mutual), and when he finally got a chance to harass us, he took it. When the Texas Rangers got into it, they basically said “:rolleyes:”. Rumor was that Officer Bob very nearly lost his job over this fiasco.
And only one person had a black coat. Mine was kind of a greenish khaki. And that was the only “evidence” they had (nobody seemed to notice that we only wore them when it was cold, raining, or both :rolleyes: ). Straight-A honors students, all the teachers loved us, etc.
This is my first post, but I know there will be more. I have read all of the posts in this thread, what I find truely funny about the ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy is that you Americans (I love generalizing) have decided to criminalize your children rather than attacking the root of your problems. Up here in Canada we had a school shooting shortly following the Littletown, Colerado incident. A boy in Taber, Alberta went on a shooting rampage in his high school. The difference…one death one injury, the boy was using a 22 gauge hunting rifle, rather than an assault rifle. The Canadian responce was to create newer, tougher gun laws, gun laws that make the USA look like gun instruction manuals. Lets not ban assault rifles, lets ban freedom of though and expression because our outdated Constitution makes an obscure reference to bearing arms (which in Canada refers to rolling up our sleeves for a tan). Unless you remove the situation that allows insane people access to guns, you are forced to remove the insame people from society… after they have gunned down a few dozen people.
Oh, Chilly, you silly - don’t you know that if it’s in the Constitution, it must be right?
Who are we to criticize the US constitution? We haven’t even got one of our own.
Obviously, restricting lethal weapons isn’t the answer. It says so in the Constitution, and if it’s been there for more than two hundred years, there’s certainly no reason to doubt it now.
That’s right. Remember kids, if you suspect your neighbors, your friends, or even your PARENTS of commiting unlawful acts, turn them in immediatly! The government is your friend! Everyone loves a snitch!
Oh, Chilly Willy, I think I understand now. Instead of dealing with the root cause of the problem, as you seemed to propose initially, but then got away from in your next sentence, we should take more idiotic and ineffectual measures that abridge the basic freedoms of people. Yeah, that makes a tremendous amount of sense. Thanks for proposing that we replace one braindead policy with another. Good show.
BTW, do you even know what an “assault rifle” is? Do you anything about what happened at Columbine at all?
And, this not being a criticism or a nitpick, just an FYI offered in the huble spirit of friendship, it was in Littleton, not Littletown. (Not that Columbine high school is in Littleton; it’s not even in the same county).
I’m gonna answer this, not because I feel it has any value as a critism, but rather because it boasts the brain dead ideals that are causing the problem.
Firstly: assault rifle, none involved in school shooting, I may have inadvertently implied there was. Incedentally, no I have never seen an assault rifle (ineffectual measures my ass)
Secondly: No I don’t know where Littleton, or Columbine is because I didn’t watch the 72 hour media frenzy that glorifies these ‘events’. I wasn’t reseaching the situation, but rather reacting to the violence that is erupting.
Thirdly: measures that abridge the basic freedoms of people???, that’s what laws are. Why is cocaine illegal? It causes problems to society. I have nothing against someone using drugs in their own home…you want to destroy your brain knock yourself out. The problem is that drug abuse (like gun abuse) impinges on the rights and freedoms of other people.
The laws you have in place may be ineffectual, but they exist because they are the best measures that we as a freedom loving people have at curbing those who impinge on our freedom.
What is your solution to the problem? Arm everyone? In that way everyone has a fair ‘shot’ at surving a gun battle. Let me know how many people have to die protecting your ‘right’ to carry a weapon.
All right! I’m glad that you like to make judgements about things without having the slightest bit of information about them. Lots of people are reacting to the violence, and, like you, they go for the easy plays, like dumping on guns, or dumping on drawings, or attempting to censor children’s thoughts.
That’s what this thread is about, in case you haven’t noticed. And my point was that your simple-minded approach to stopping school violence is as bad as the other other examples here.
I think you’re characterizing me as a gun-nut while having no idea what I think about the subject. I didn’t say that everyone should have any gun they want or that no one should have guns. All I said was that, in your zeal to place the blame for a complex problem on a simple cause, you were being an idiot, just like those who espouse zero tolerance.
Let’s all say this together: “Eliminating one means to do violence, or drawings about violence, or speaking about violence, or movies or music about violence, does not make violent people non-violent.”
Good use of quoting out of context on your previous response Necros. A little childish, but going well with the theme of media responce to mass murder.
To begin with I appologize to you for assuming that you were a gun toting idiot.
Secondly,I agree that action without reseach is worthless. However I wasn’t taking action I was making comments. Comments that no rational person should ignore. Or site as worthless because it would be to hard.
Your first erroneous statement was that I linked the presence of guns to violence…not so if you’ll examine my previous post I pointed out that ready access to guns increases the magnitude of violence.
Violence has existed as long as humanity… However, you try going on a rampage with a pointed stick and see how many people you kill before you a)get really tired or b)someone stops you.
My solution isn’t naive, it ignores the problem of ‘getting rid of violence’ or ‘by banning violent artwork we can stop violenve’, instead it deals with the more managable problem: reduce the damage!!
My attack on you was primarily to make a point that who in their right mind wants more guns? Continue along that train of thought and you’ll arrive at the conclusion: guns are bad why do we want them at all?
