--Ben Franklin

http://zerointelligence.net/ has a wealth of information on the subject of zero-tolerance lunacy. ZT drug policies have kept children from their athsma medicine. ZT weapons policies have caused kids to be hauled out in handcuffs because they left a pocket knife in their backpack after coming back from camping. ZT policies on threats have lead to the sort of thing they have in Florida -- 9 and 10 year olds being frog-marched out of class in handcuffs.

It's pretty scary. In some places, writing stories in creative writing class can get you arrested. (Think: first-person account from the killer's point of view. Make the victim recognizable as a fellow classmate, and you're in deep doo-doo.)

The concept of thoughtcrime is a (nascent) reality. Of course, it's not entirely without justification. I used to draw pictures of shooting various teachers and students -- it was something everyone did. Then two psychos dressed in black leather trenchcoats and actually DID it, and they changed the landscape.

Nevertheless, the ZT policy is direct result of an ever-increasingly litigious society and, quite possibly, really bad advice on parenting and raising children since the 60's (not saying any of you are bad parents). Schools are afraid of being sued. So, they essentially took away a teacher's ability to discipline a student. ZT is the backlash. Fine, they said, we can't discipline our students, so we'll call the police instead. Its our own fault... we let this happen. We let lawyers do this. We've allowed them to take responsibility away from both educators and parents. It's our culture of "blame someone else" that caused this.

While in junior high, we sometimes settled things by fighting after school, just off of school grounds -- like many people probably did in school. Our school VP would show up just to make sure no one got truly hurt, and to break the fight up if it looked like that was going to happen, and to make sure it was a fair fight, one on one.

Years later, I (then an adult) ran into my former JH VP and I asked why he let us fight. He essentially said, you can't stop kids from being kids. They'll fight anyway, and this way, at least he can make sure they're back in school tomorrow and learning something, rather than something worse. Was he negligent? I dunno. Depends on your views. But no one ever got arrested for it, or sent to the hospital or put in to a juvenile center... and I'd say the majority of us turned out to be decent folk.