It isn't zero tolerance that keeps the fights from getting bloody. We could bring guns to school (for hunting afterward), and it was the rare individual who didn't have a pocket knife on him. I made a spear gun in shop.
What we had that was different was discipline, the backing of parents, and the ability to expell students who didn't cooperate.
The teachers union, department of education, federal and state funding have all worked to eliminate that level of local control.
discipline, the backing of parents, and the ability to expell students who didn't cooperate. We don't have that here, it's a different kind of society, knives would definitely get used in some of these fights if they had them with them. It's a good way to get the trouble makers out ---sometimes good kids get caught because they brought a knife or gun --but then they can go to an alternative school, sometimes if they do well there they can come back. It's good because by high school, most of the non-performers and punks are gone.
marktwain:
"It isn't zero tolerance that keeps the fights from getting bloody. We could bring guns to school (for hunting afterward), and it was the rare individual who didn't have a pocket knife on him. I made a spear gun in shop.
Exactly! Pocket knives are
tools. (Switch blades were banned.) We shot arrows in the school cafeteria (after school.)
FITZ:
"We have zero-tolerance in the public schools my kids attend and if it weren't for that, I'd have to home-school them.
Nonsense.
CGTRWK:
"If you leave any room in the rules for the administrators' discretion, obviously when a known good kid brings is giving a friend what looks like an aspirin or brings in a pocketknife or whatever it is, you don't punish them. But when a known troublemaker does the same thing, he's up to no good and you crack down on it.
No. Even a known troublemaker should be able to share his aspirin (or lemon drops) with a friend. A "known" good kid should be busted for sharing his methamphetamine.
Let's look at the lessons taught by "Zero Tolerance:"
- Butter knives are in the same category as bayonettes.
- Anything in pill form is in the same category as heroin.
- "Nice T-shirt" is in the same category as "sleep with me or you're fired."
- You are guilty if a government official (school administrator) says so.
- Due process consists of an edict by a government official.
When pocket knives and aspirin were common in schools, violence was
not. Yes, things are different today. But the solution is to find the cause, and fix
that, not to make the situation worse by trivializing true offences by putting them into the same category as non-offences.