[Moleman]

More "for the children"

If my district started this BS I'd pull my kids out and put them in private schools.<br< I'm not a big WOD person one way or the other but this is nuts.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Once accused of a zero tolerance offense, a student is automatically guilty. There's no platform for presenting a defense and no avenue for appeal. The accused is gone and often for good.

Zero tolerance always sounds good to the alarmist parents, until it is their child who brings the bottle of aspirin to school.

[Dan from Michigan]

But Walters, who advocates testing all students, says the random checks are a powerful deterrent and a weapon students can use against peer pressure. Since drug addiction is a disease, he says, it should be treated like tuberculosis or other infectious diseases that students are screened for.

After school programs I can see, but all students? If you tested me during school hours, I'd tell them to go to hell. No warrant. No search. They wouldn't have found jack, but my 4th amendment rights are worth keeping.

"We have a tool to protect young people," says Walters, a Michigan native. "And young people should have the right to expect adults to protect them."

And who the hell is going to protect young people from bureaucrats and power hungry pols from which most protection is needed.

[trebb]

I find it interesting that the author specifies the Bush war on drugs and finishes by complaining about the zero-tolerance programs of the left-wing "liberals".. I guess he is aware that the libs have been ruining society, but figured that he had a chance to foist the blame off on Bush...

[Hodar]

Hmmmm, we have money for random drug tests on kids who have exhibited no behavioral problems. But we do not have enough money in the schools to teach the kids to read or write. Curious, isn't it.

[Long Cut]

At that infamous school in the Carolinas about a month ago, after the police, with guns drawn, invaded the school and held students down for searches, as well as tackled a few and handcuffed them so the dogs would be able to sniff easier, and after which not a single drug was found, I never heard a single student mention his/her Constitutional rights.

Every one of them described how scared and afraid they were.

I guess some classes about American history, government, and the Bill Of Rights are in order.

However, whilst waiting for the schools to get that started, I'll carefully teach my own son about those things. Just to be sure.

[Teacher317]

"We have a tool to protect young people," says Walters, a Michigan native. "And young people should have the right to expect adults to protect them."

What curious phrasing. They have a right to expect something? It sounds like if parents fail to protect them, say, from an errant meteor, the parent should be liable. He's stating it as an absolute Right, and it implies the parental protection is the Right, not the mental notion of expectation.

And what does the state do if the parent should fail the child's expectation of protection? CPS comes in and the state claims yet another ward?

[vanmorrison]

Whenever I read an article like this, I can't help but think that all of this bureacratic and regulatory overreach that we live with every day is a direct result of many, many years of the majority of the American people clamoring for more and more of the very governmental meddling that they later decry.

And I always drearily conclude that things will never get better, only progressively worse.

[ladylib]

These proponents of zero tolerance (public school officials) are going to get bitten on the butt when the current generation of kids decides that in no way will their children go through the crap they had to to get through school.

On-line courses are becoming more and more popular for kids who just don't want to go through a public school experience.

[Stone Mountain]

Randomly yanking a student out of a band rehearsal and demanding a urine sample, with no reason to suspect wrongdoing, undermines the concept of presumed innocence and privacy rights. It also softens resistance to future intrusions.

Bingo!