Rethinking "Zero Tolerance"

I never really understood the idea behind "zero tolerance". The term standing alone sounds bad. Zero Tolerance. In a country that still struggles with racism, sexism, and classism, should we allow a word that can be so positive ("tolerance") be associated with such negativity?

No.

According to this article, there is finally a backlash against "zero tolerance".

Some parents have mixed feelings about zero-tolerance rules. Christine Duckworth, 50, is the mother of an 18-year-old daughter who just graduated Portsmouth High School in Rhode Island, which has a zero-tolerance policy.

Duckworth said she wanted her daughter safe at school, but she said rules must reflect that teenagers make mistakes."

I think there's pretty much always a gray area," she said. "You're dealing with individuals. How can you possibly apply one law to every single person and their circumstances?"

I think that is a good point. Universal punishments for crimes in thoery sounds fair. In practice that doesn't always prove to be the case. The article has several good examples:

Fifth-graders in California who adorned their mortarboards with tiny toy plastic soldiers this week to support troops in Iraq were forced to cut off their miniature weapons. A Utah boy was suspended for giving his cousin a cold pill prescribed to both students. In Rhode Island, a kindergartner was suspended for bringing a plastic knife to school so he could cut cookies.

It doesn't say what the punishments for these infractions were, but with rules in place that do not allow teachers to take the seriousness of the incidents into consideration, I can see how easy it would be for the punishments to be excessive. I don't believe that a kindergartner with a plastic knife should be penalized the same way that a teenager caught with a switchblade is.

The policy has proved to be a lousy deterrent not only to rule violations on school campuses, but also to the willingness of students to be honest with and seek help from their educators.

Reynolds also questioned what lessons zero-tolerance rules teach, citing reports that a 10-year-old girl was expelled from a Colorado academy after giving a teacher a small knife her mother placed in her lunchbox.

"What she learned from the school was, 'If something happens and you break a rule, for God's sake, don't tell anybody,'" Reynolds said. "Zero tolerance policies completely ignore the concept of intent, which is antithetical to the American philosophy of justice."

Expelled. Ten years old and expelled for being honest with a teacher about something her mother did. Disgusting.

Obviously, the whole notion of "zero tolerance" needs to be reexamined. It is nice to see that more people are finally starting to climb on board with this view. Better late than never.