[Tim Osman]

If you teach kids that they have no rights whatsoever, then kids will eventually view, as they grow older, that their elders and peers are undeserving of rights as well.

Zero-tolerance policies teach kids that the United States is NOT the land of the free.

Very good analysis. What can be done about it? I think US schools have passed the point of no return on this one...

I myself believe that public schooling should NOT be compulsary, but if it is going to be, students should be afforded full rights as citizens under the constitution. If you make someone go to a building all day long, indoctrinate them all day statist propaganda, curtail their rights while they are there, and threaten them with arrest if they fail to attend...

Isn't that basically slavery?

[Paul C. Jesup]

I feel all this regulation will bankrupt and collapse this country's government and economic systems sooner than anyone else thinks. And maybe then things will start to change for the better.

[ladylib]

Zero-tolerance policies teach kids that government school officials are idiots and not worth the money they scam from the public trough. Might not be a bad thing.....

[FITZ]

I myself believe that public schooling should NOT be compulsary

This is much of the problem --- school is compulsary, many of the kids aren't going to learn, they don't wish to learn, they have no desire at all to be at school ---- they start causing problems --- leading to zero-tolerance policies. It would be better to let those that aren't going to school to learn just to drop-out or give them alternative programs like vocational training.