Zero Tolerance in Grade Schools...Does it work?

Do the benefits out weigh the problems it causes?

IE: My son (Age 9) goes to a school that has a zero tolerance policy. There have been times where the bullies of the school have picked on him and when the teachers found out about it, BOTH the bully and my son received detentions. (And an in-class suspension on one occasion.)

It has gotten to the point now that my son no longer cares. He feels that if he is going to get into trouble anyway, he might as well fight back against these kids.

Do the administrators of these schools not see this happening??? Is this just a case of teachers being to lazy to try and resolve the situation by taking the easiest route and punishing them both???

It drives me nuts!

It would be helpful if we understood what the policy is.

Sounds like their grade school policy is what they have at my brother’s middle school. Zero tolerance for fighting.

If there is a fight both students are suspended for three days. It doesn’t matter if one student started it or why it happened. If someone attacks my brother he can be (and was) suspended if he defends himself. They have the same zero tolerance for drugs. The penalties for distributing aspirin are the same as the penalties for distributing pot. (At the school level. Police are of course involved for the pot.)

In my opinion all zero tolerance policies are dumb. They are just a way to keep educators from having to deal with the problems.

I agree completely.

Wring, the policy is basically what Zumba stated…but it can be taken to the next level. Zero Tolerance for ANY inappropriate behavior.

(IE: My son was ‘written up’ AT LUNCHTIME for turning in his seat and talking to the kid behind him!)

He was on a field trip yesterday and the teacher said his behavior was ‘deplorable’. (He didn’t immediately return to the group when they were feeding birds at a zoo.) So she feels its necessary not to allow him to attend ANY more school field trips.
No I understand that he should have stopped what he was doing and returned to the group, but banning him from ALL field trips? My gawd!

I just can’t get over just how LAZY some people are.

Now I know some of you may be wondering what happens in the home. Is there is discipline or is this another case of a kid running wild. Believe me, I’m putting my British upbringing to good use. (Without all the leather belts though =)

He’s a good kid and VERY well behaved, but seems to have a hard time at school because of the other kids that do run wild. He want’s to do the good thing and tell the teacher but sometimes just gets fed up and fights back…He knows fighting is wrong, but he knows he will get into the same trouble heven if he runs and tells the teacher.

What can one do….

These kind of policies are moronic. It just teaches the children that their educators dispense discipline arbitrarily and unfairly. It fosters resentment against the school system, an attitude that certainly doesn’t need even more reason to form. It keeps the child from learning respect for the adults in the school, which is only right because any educators that dispense justice in this manner are undeserving of respect.

And, from the bully’s point of view, not only can he beat up the kid, he can get him in trouble too. What could be better?

Too often, students are treated like cattle, with no respect for their right to fairness in the institution that presumes to educate them.

Well said. I think the biggest problem is that the schools have unions which, I guess, allows them to be lazy and have nothing done about it… (MHO)

sounds like you’re looking for specific advice vs. a general debate?

Ok on the debate side - “zero tolerance” policies have gained support in the same way that the ‘lock em all up’ type stuff gets popular. It makes it seem that great strides are being made towards gaining the goal of ‘good behavior’ for all. Do they accomplish this task? data isn’t in to support it, and there’s a bunch of anecdotal stuff that shows how absurd things can get.

Practical stuff with your child and the school (been there, did that, lectured to the college students about it).

  1. It may be a bad match with this teacher. In grade school, generally, you have a bit more leeway (if you can take time off work)- I recommend showing up at odd times to observe. Meet with the teacher with a “little Johnnie seems to be having difficulty adjusting, what can we do to correct this” (it’s a better tactic to take than 'you’re a nimrod and stop abusing my child). You may also get a better eye on what exactly is transpiring.

  2. Start keeping a log of events. Specific event, school response. When my kid hit middle school (with a vengence), they, too had a ‘zero tolerance’ for fighting policy. But what we found is that a ‘fight’ was two people touching. One person only touching was considered “horsing around among friends” and wasn’t dealt with - so when my kid was hit/shoved etc and didn’t touch back, it was a non event. If he touched back, they both were expelled. I raised holy hell with them, had a 3 page letter detailing specific acts that my son had put up with and the school had ignored, eventually, they switched his teaching team, administrator, a security guard was written up, school board was involved…

  3. If he’s getting picked on regularly by the same group of kids, it’s time to meet with the school administration to come up with a plan to protect your child. Again, if you have a list of events etc. that’s helpful.

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by wring *
**

I was looking to peoples attitude on ZT as I have to call and talk to this teacher today and deal with her.

So you are correct in essence. I am looking to see the different point of views on the subject and see how people feel. I put in some personal experiences in there and kinda hi-jacked my own debate.

Sorry all…this is just something that is infuriating me to know end and you guys always have a way of coming through and showing people both sides of a story =)

I guess this can now be moved to GQ.

Personally, I am a big fan of tolerance.

Bright lines make for easy enforcement by lazy administrators. And, announcement and enforcement of an irrational and ineffective policy gives the appearance of doing something (instead of actually addresing and resolving the problem.)

Problems with “zero tolerance” policies:

  1. ZT on drugs leads to odd definitions of the word ‘drug’ and the necessity of having a parent escort the child to school in order to allow them to have midol for their cramps. Under a ZT for drugs policy, a topical cream cannot be dispensed w/o specific doctor’s instructions (and the phrase ‘as needed’ wasn’t good enough).

  2. ZT on weapons leads to: Your child’s b’day cake cannot be cut. a plastic knife for spreading cream cheese on his bagel is now outlawed. Scissors are problematic. My son had a set of needlenosed pliers confiscated (they were in his back pack, he wasn’t waving them around as a weapon).

  3. A ZT on violence can lead to situations where the bully is able to cause not only physical harm to the intended victim, but is also able to cause suspension and other school punishments. The new wrinkle is the ZT on ‘verbal violence’, which leads to expulsions/suspensions for threats which may or may not be serious in nature.

The phrase “zero tolerance” means that no explanation however reasonable is acceptable.

This is a major problem with those policies.

(how’s that for a GD answer?)

That works for me. Thanks Wring.

You should teach your child how to get out of stuff like that. I’ve had many fights with bullys and I have never been punished even with zero tolerance rules.

No.

Zero tolerance also takes choice away from principals who would otherwise use common sense. I know of one case last year, a 9 year old in Richland Public Schools was expelled (for life!) for having a nearly dull, small pocket knife in his backpack. HE Didn’t know it was in there. But somehow it got found, and now he’s out of public schools.

Zero Tolerance laws are insane. They don’t hurt the minority they are designed to deal with, and hurt the victims more.

Our school has such a policy. It really seems stupid that the person being beat up should get punished for standing there. The reasoning that they somehow brought it on themselves is on the same lines that someone who was raped was because she dressed provocatively.

In the most insidious form, it hampers creativity. This form being the one that punishes kids because of the way they dress or who they are with.

The first step should be to not elevate everyone in sports above others. School is for learning and education, not fearing if the football players will shove you into lockers. But I disgress.

I also wanted to say that all cases of “capital” punishment such as weapons or fighting should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. If someone reports getting beat up, they should not fear being punished.

Man, this topic has me nearly in tears. “Nearly”, 'cause you know, I’m a man, and men don’t cry. I think I’ll go wrestle alligators just 'cause I’m so manly.

Ahem.

Anyway, I was picked on as a child. A lot. The problems were that I was small for my age (Until I turned 14 or so. Then I got big, and they left me alone. Go fig.), and also that my family moved a bit, so I didn’t have many friends. Add in the fact that I was smarter than most of 'em, and hadn’t learned to hide it yet- well, you’ve got a recipe for teasing.

In the fifth grade, a group of about six kids took it upon themselves to make my life a living hell. Every day I’d get teased, hit, and humiliated. If I went to the teacher, nothing would be done- quite often, I was told to just ignore 'em. Has that trick ever worked? Needless to say, I got beat up quite a bit. The teachers pretty much ignored it- even when my mother talked to them about it.

Eventually, I started to get my growth- and then I was able to fight back. I never started the fights, but I wasn’t left cowering in the dirt after them, either.

So, of course, I started getting punished. The administrators punished both of us, equally, but that wasn’t much of a consolation to me.

One time in particular, a kid for whatever reason kept trying to pick a fight with me- for about a week. Eventually, I stopped running away from him. We fought, I won. The principal suspended us both. Why me? 'Cause I should have told a teacher that the kid was trying to pick a fight with me- even though, in the past, that did NO GOOD WHATSOEVER.

Ahem.

Zero Tolerance sucks. That’s all there is to it- I grew fed up with the entire school system. I grew to feel that they didn’t care a thing about me- I was just a number, and they were simply trying to find the easiest, most efficient way to get me out of the system.

Private schools look better and better- at least with a private school, parents can shop around for a more compassionate, understanding faculty.

Well, Doubleclick, you guessed wrong. Schools - or rather, the people who work in schools - have unions in order to protect their rights as state employees and use collective bargaining to secure better employment contracts. I have yet to meet a single teacher, staff member, or administrator who was complacent to the point of laziness over the problems faced by their schools’ populations. However, that’s a whole other Great Debate.

The biggest problem I see in schools is an abominable lack of resources. There aren’t enough schools, classrooms, teachers, janitors, nurses, textbooks, what-have-you for all the students. The end result is that no one has the time to address each incident, learn the details, and apply appropriate solutions (boot one kid out, send the second to counseling, arrest the third kid, apologize to the fourth, and thank the fifth). So, instead of owning up to this problem and being labeled as a lazy, troublemaking, whistle-blowing, hand-out begging incompetant, they come up with a policy that sounds good but really only makes the problem worse.

Some of these policies are worse than others. For instance, the ZT for drugs policy has a point. To a layperson, it can be hard to tell the difference between, oh, a 300 mg gelcoated buffered aspirin pill and an illegal pharmaceutical of another sort. Schools don’t have the manpower - and shouldn’t waste it - on checking every student’s OTC medication for prohibited substances. Have the kids stop at the nurse’s office for aspirin, Midol, and other OTC medications and either keep a parental/guardian permission slip on file or let the nurse call the parent/guardian for confirmation.

As far as weapons go, it makes sense to completely ban all firearms from school campus. Where it gets weird is when they expand the definition of “weapon” to include things no sane child would ever consider using with violence. After all, when you get down to it, anything can become a weapon - pencils, pens, desks, scantron forms, football coaches, whatever. The bizarre nature of some of the weapons-carrying allegations only shows that the policy writers:

a) have no contact with students on a day-to-day basis
b) couldn’t carry a thought out to a logical conclusion if someone held a loaded scantron to their head
c) are more concerned with covering their butt from potential litigation by the outraged parents of a child injured in a scantron assault than they are with making sense
d) all of the above

More and more authority has been taken away from the people who actually make a school work - the administrators, the faculty, and the staff. Some of this is the ebb and flow of pedagogical politics, but way too much of this has to do with the fact that there are far too few resources for far too many students.

Lightin’, I never got into a fight as a student, but I totally empathize with your experiences. There was one teacher and a counselor who finally listened to me and put a stop to the girls who’d made a sport of making me cry. Before - and after, unfortunately - them, none of my teachers made the smallest effort. As a future teacher, that is one thing I know I will never tolerate in my class.

Although I had some problems with unfair enforcement of rules in school, I guess I was lucky to get out before these zero tolerance rules came into effect. I never got into fights in high school, but there was an occasion where some asshole tried to throw a plate full of nachos at me. I swung my notebook up to block it, and caught him across the nose with it. This kid was normally something of a bully, but seeing all the blood running out of his nose and down his chin and shirt freaked him out. I got taken to the principals office and was terrified that I was going to be suspended, as was the normal punishment for fighting. The principal apparently took into consideration the fact that I had never been involved in any altercations in the four years I was in the school and the fact this other kid was, and only gave me three days of detention. Today I probably would have been suspended.

We were also allowed to bring pocket knives to school as long as they were under 6 inches open, and nobody ever got stabbed. Things have changed a lot in the last 10 years…

My school has ZT…but luckily for me, the teachers are incredibly lazy and don’t enforce something unless it is very serious(like if some guys started wrestling and stompin on each other). I’m not really big, and my muscles look pathetic, so I tend to receive a lot of insults(But with my time watching GD, I can wing em right back!). Sometimes my enemies attempt physical abuse…they usually end up regreting it cause I almost never fight back and thsu they don’t expect me to oh say grab their neck and slam them against a wall. Although this is only happened about 5 times, I’ve yet to receive anything more than “settle down”. BTW this is a Junior High/High School.

Anyway…I think ZT is stupid.

Do you mean he was suspnded for fighting back, or just for being picked on? I think punishing people for fighting back is rather silly. The excuse “it’s too much trouble figuring out who started it” is just silly. If you think that protecting the innocent is “too much trouble”, then you really shouldn’t be in any position of authority.
As for punishing people simply for being attacked, that’s beyond silly. That’s child abuse. I’m serious. Next time this happens, you should call up the police and try to get the administrators arrested. This isn’t doing anything to stop violence; it promotes it by making it clear to that
a) you can beat people up without any fear that they will tell on you
b) if you get beaten up, there is no way you’re going to get outside help. If you want to get revenge, you’ll have to do it yourself (or get your friends to help you). If those two kids had felt comfortable coming to their teachers for help, would their have been the Columbine massacre? Of course not.
The phrase “beatings will continue until morale improves” comes to mind.

phouka:

No, it doesn’t.

So? I can’t tell the difference between Vodka and water at a glance. Should we outlaw water? I can’t tell the difference between “magic” brownies and normal ones. Should we outlaw brownies? Why can’t the school (gasp) trust the students? The fact that something is possible doesn’t mean that we must take every possible step to prevent it.