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Zero Tolerance is Zero Intelligence

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Zero Tolerance is Zero Intelligence

A Promise is a Promise

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/02/student.threats.ap/index.html
from JoeUser Forums

2 students in Orange Co. California are facing expulsion for taking a teacher at her word.  The teacher assigned a project where the students were to keep a journal with the understanding that no one would read it   (except her for grading).  Instead the teacher read somethings and decided to let others read them as well.  And the students were suspended and are awaiting an expulsion hearing.

Why?  Well, in their journals, they talked about torturing and killing a teacher.  From the little snippets that the article revealed, it appears that they were just being stupid adolescents, and trying to one up each other on what they thought was a funny scenario.  All with the expectation of the journal not being read per the promise of the teacher.  But she broke her promise.

And in the zero tolerance of the post Columbine mentality of schools, these students are being punished not for anything they did (or you could say for doing what hey were told, but I digress), but for believing the word of an adult.

In this stupidity that passes for education today, they ignatzes don't even realize the damage they have done, not only to these 2 students, but to their own reputations.  No longer can any student trust the word of a teacher.  All teachers are suspect, and should be regarded as only telling the truth, when it suits them, and not when it is the right thing to do.  And that is the lesson the teachers are not only teaching these 2 students, but the entire student body.  Wow!  What Nobel prize winning candidates!

When are these mental midgets going to learn that actions speak louder than words?  And when you leave reason at the school door, the only thing you are teaching the students is to never trust people in authority.  For they will always let you down?  It requires no intelligence to enforce a zero tolerance policy where a spork becomes an expulsion offense.  And the trust that the teachers are supposed to be trying to create with their student is gone. 

I am glad most of my children are out of school.  I pray that the remaining 2 will not be saddled with mental midgets in their last few years. But my grandchildren will have to spend a school career with a bunch of mind numbed robots that cant think for themselves and that my grandchildren can never trust for anything.  Not even legitimate school work.

It is a sad day in education, not because of 2 over hormonal jocks who may have to seek a new school, but for the millions of school children that just learned a valuable lesson.  Never trust a teacher.  Hire a lawyer and get them to sign an unbreakable contract.

The Legal professions stock just doubled, thanks to idiots in education.

17,740 views 129 replies
Reply #101 from JoeUser Forums Top

but look at the majority of kids who become school shooters. Most were,it seems, outsiders. They were loners with personal problems who were bullied and abused by cliques of one sort or another.

As parents, we try to protect our children.  We dont intentionally place them in harms way.  Yet we cannot and shjould not insulate them from everything that could possibly happen to them.  If you want that, put them in a rubber room and stick a feeding tube in them!

Reply #102 from JoeUser Forums Top

It's a long story, and I wrote a blog about it if you'd like a fairly concise re-telling. I'll try to summarize it briefly here:

BUT (As Trudy says, the big but) - He never wrote about it.  He did it. And that is a big difference as well.

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #103 from JoeUser Forums Top

Eventually, after a couple of omre 9/11s and McDonald's shooting sprees, this draconian standard will be used on adults, and these precedents will help it along.

And many that are clamoring for ZT will be wondering how they lost all of their civil liberties as well.

Reply #104 from JoeUser Forums Top

while i personally feel 'zero tolerance' represents the most blatant idiocy of the reaganite perspective (and one of several valid indications bill bennett took that whole czar thing so seriously, he should treated to a long vacation in siberia), i wonder if yall would feel differently if these two morons had described an excruciatingly graphic step-by-step plan to sexually molest the teacher. or the teacher's 4-year-old daughter.

or both.

First, you are off base on ZT.  It came after Columbine, and that was long after Reagan and Bennett.  And it is and was a knee jerk and still is.  If this was a reagan thing like you claim, why is it only now that such stupid stories are surfacing?

Reply #105 from JoeUser Forums Top

Here the teacher may have an option of doing what most teachers can do -- talk to the kid as teacher AND counselor.

A radical concept no longer practiced in this day and age.

Reply #106 from JoeUser Forums Top

Let me ask you this...if your wife were the teacher in this class, and two of her students turned in assignments describing how they'd like to strip her naked, mutilate her body, and murder her while you and the rest of her family watched, how would you feel about it?

I would be pissed and in their face the next day.  I would not be gathering a mob and lynching them however. 

I did not ever state that the teacher should not have been concerned.  But she definitely over reacted, and the administration did not engage brain.  That is the crux in this matter. A teacher lied to her students, and then the robotic arm took control and that is the end of the story unfortunately.  At no time where the students confronted and this hashed out. Instead, engage switch, and chop off head was all that happened.

Reply #107 from JoeUser Forums Top

Again, I don't think that's anything to brag about. Being a young male is not an excuse for plotting the murder of a teacher. Sorry.

It is not bragging.  It is a statement of fact.  I dont boast about it, but I do admit it. No one is saying it is an excuse, but then the assertion that it is a murder plot is also not in evidence either.

Reply #108 from JoeUser Forums Top

I may disappoint when I say this, but I probably would have done the same thing. Yes, she did promise confidentiality to these students, and yes, she did break a promise... but this was shocking and disturbing content she read... how could ANY teacher turn a cheek to that?

If the students had a pattern, or where otherwise suspicious, I can see it.  But the story does not indicate any proclivity, and the fact they wrote it knowing she would read it indicates they were just having fun on an assignment.

her sin is in the promise and breaking it.  The tragedy is that instead of assessing the students and confronting them, the ZT kicks in and they are gone. Period end of story.  And the end of rational thought.

Reply #109 from JoeUser Forums Top

What I find amusing is that the same people who tend to support zero-tolerance policies are the first ones to decry the Patriot act.

Insightful!  And very well put!

Reply #110 from JoeUser Forums Top

not true at all. john 'patriot act' ashcroft is the very model of a modern zero tolerator...as are his colleagues and bosses.

The point here kingbee is that the ones here at JU rallying in support of ZT are the same ones that are decrying the Patriot act.  You missed that point.

Reply #111 from JoeUser Forums Top

Capt. over and out!

A very good assessment of the whole situation.  As I have tried to make clear, there was a comedy of errors here.  Each one not in itself fatal, but taken together, they are.  The reporting by the teacher was a breach of promise, but not reprehensible beyond that. The fatal nail was the Zero Tollerance, where the students were not confronted, but the policy kicked in.  Once the breach of promise was done, the logical thing would to have been a confrontation, with the parents and teacher.  But ZT takes that option away and makes criminals out of a creative writing assignment.

Reply #112 from JoeUser Forums Top

I for one would love to see national teacher IQ testing on elementary school teachers. Given that the NEA tends to oppose any sort of merit-based testing of teachers, I can speculate as to why that is.

I think you are on to something here.  The NEA loves ZT because it hides the defects of the bad teachers.  It does nothing for the good ones that can think on their own and then decide a proper course.

Reply #113 from JoeUser Forums Top
But the story does not indicate any proclivity, and the fact they wrote it knowing she would read it indicates they were just having fun on an assignment.


It was a CREATIVE writing assignment. It wasn't a plot or a plan, they were asked to use their IMAGINATIONS and write...which they did, and look what's happened.

Like LW said, authors get paid big money for writing things similar to this. I don't see the cops going after any of them for what they wrote. I didn't see Stephen King getting prosecuted for any of the horrors that have been in his books, nor did I see PD James or Colin Dexter get tossed in jail for any of the criminal minds or acts they created in their writings.

As for teachers being of average intelligence....I've never IQ tested any of my children's teachers so I can't say for sure.
Reply #114 from JoeUser Forums Top

what exactly is it that you're disputing?

do i really need to provide evidence that 100% of teachers in all 50 states are required to complete at least a 4 year college program? if not, then you'll have to show me where 100% of parents (some of whom are very likely teachers themselves) are equally well educated.

i don't believe we've any disagreement as to the efficacy of zero tolerance.

i incorrectly inverted bennett's cv. he was reagan's sec of education before becoming ghwb's drug czar. i still contend he was the prime exponent of zero tolerance. Link

"William Bennett, former Department of Education Secretary under Reagan, rose to the position at a time when the country was getting comfortable with the idea of having a drug czar. Bennett implemented Reagan’s “zero-tolerance” orthodoxy, minimizing the medical aspects and maximizing the moral failing of addiction, and was good at demanding “accountability” from state and local governments."

if the expansion of zero tolerance policies doesn't flow directly from there, from where does it come?

There's very little you say I don't dispute and I am not going to waste my time going into very much detail because you're an ideologue.  But briefly:

1) Benette was in favor of zero-tolerance on drug policy. I have no problem with zero-tolerance if kids in school are committing felonies.  I  am not aware of any law that states that a 7 year old child may not draw a picture of a crane smashing the school.  I am not aware of any law saying that a child may not bring in a butter knife with their lunch.  And zero tolerance that we are discussing here, that you seem to be unaware of, has risen since Columbine. It was Columbine that started this idiocy. It's such a stretch to try to somehow blame Benette 20+ years ago for a policy that got started just a few years ago. Incidentally, I was in high school during Benette's tenure so obviously ZT wasn't in effect then. You are completely distorting Benette's position to further your own agenda and frankly, nobody's interested in it.

2) You totally missed the point about the Patriot Act.  The people you see defending Zero Tolerance are the ones who decry the Patriot act.  Your response is to make a quip and a nonsensical assertion that conservatives/Republicans support Zero Tolerance "because" John Ascroft would support these policies (which you provide no evidence).

3) Your general attempt to hijack a thread to further some extremely narrow outrage against a 25 year old drug policy is obnoxious.  Are we talking about kids with drugs here? No. You're just adding noise to the conversation.  It's not that you disagree, it's that you're just completely out there in what you're trying to insert into this conversation. 

Reply #115 from JoeUser Forums Top

You want me to call CPS if a child has a bruise, but not even call a parent if they write in their journal that they want to slit someone's throat? That makes no sense

I, for one, don't want you calling CPS if a child has a bruise, either.

Reply #116 from JoeUser Forums Top

lol...I understand where you're coming from. Don't get me wrong. I think its a shame that we have to be so up in arms over such silly things... But it's a fact of life in America today, you know?

Aren't we SUPPOSED to be a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people"? Were we really meant to accept such injustices as "facts of life", or should we be out there trying to fix them?

The fact that you see the point, Marcie, indicates that you are aware of the flaws of "zero tolerance". Do you really feel comfortable with legislators telling you you're too stupid to think for yourself, or wouldn't you rather try to change the laws and policies so that they recognize the years of training you spent becoming a teacher and the expertse you are fast acquiring as a teacher in the classroom?

Reply #117 from JoeUser Forums Top
It's such a stretch to try to somehow blame Benette 20+ years ago for a policy that got started just a few years ago.


only if you believe history is static and effects suddenly spring into being without causes or in a vacuum.

what you prefer to avoid seeing is the inevitable shift from advocating zero tolerance as a solution to any problem to its application as a solution to every problem.

the same is true of mandatory sentencing (which is zero tolerance in disguise).

bennett is someone only a mother (only 12% of whom hold 4 year degrees) or an ideologue could love or defend.
Reply #118 from JoeUser Forums Top
I, for one, don't want you calling CPS if a child has a bruise, either.


No...I know that you don't. One of my little girls in my class last year was a string bean, and she and her dad were playing and he was swinging her around by the wrists and she got bruises. I wasn't worried about her welfare at all--but people who didn't know her family and observe the relationship she had with her parents thought I should call.

Aren't we SUPPOSED to be a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people"? Were we really meant to accept such injustices as "facts of life", or should we be out there trying to fix them?

The fact that you see the point, Marcie, indicates that you are aware of the flaws of "zero tolerance". Do you really feel comfortable with legislators telling you you're too stupid to think for yourself, or wouldn't you rather try to change the laws and policies so that they recognize the years of training you spent becoming a teacher and the expertse you are fast acquiring as a teacher in the classroom?


No, I don't feel comfortable with any of it. But after teaching all day, and then preparing some more, and correcting and trying to have an hour of a life for me, I don't have the engergy to go be a warrior about it. I'm whipped. This job sucks the life out of me. I love my students, but after my day, I don't think I could handle calling my congressperson (since I moved I guess I don't really even know who that is), or drivign to St. Paul to march.

Teachers are the crap catchers. We're supposed to be able to know when a child isn't being taken care of at home. We're supposed to be able to know every sort of disorder or disability there is out there. We deal with children whose parents give absolutely no discipline at home. We deal with policies that are so paradoxial that they're ridiculous.

No...there's not much Marcie left to give to a cause after the day is done...
Reply #119 from JoeUser Forums Top
"Teachers are the crap catchers. We're supposed to be able to know when a child isn't being taken care of at home. We're supposed to be able to know every sort of disorder or disability there is out there. We deal with children whose parents give absolutely no discipline at home. We deal with policies that are so paradoxial that they're ridiculous.

No...there's not much Marcie left to give to a cause after the day is done..."


Poor perpetually-wounded Marcie. I don't know a single parent in real life that wants you to do those things, and most of the people I know are irritated that inept teachers ATTEMPT to do those things with no expertise for doing so. Frankly, I think teachers have just used such things to inflate their importance and now they have to live with them as policy.

I seem to remember an reposted article by a teacher being posted here about how they rooted out the family problems of a troubled student, and how it lauded the efforts of teachers to do such. I remember being told that was the responsibility of a teacher. I remember teachers around here getting up in arms when parents told them to butt the hell out.

So, pardon me if this "crap catcher" shine seems disingenuous to me, seeing as how you and your partner drilled it into our heads that you were going to be crap catchers whether we liked it or not. Don't shove stuff down people's throats and then pretend it's such a chore. Most people would much prefer that teachers teach and butt out otherwise.
Reply #121 from JoeUser Forums Top
" Fuck off, Baker...just fuck off."


No. During the whole "teacher as surrogate parent" discussion, you and your other half pretty much told those who opposed you that you were going to watch our children for "warning signs" of perceived problems and abuse whether we like it or not. That was "being a teacher", now it is being a "crap catcher".

Don't expect to bemoan the fact you have those extra responsibilities without getting called on it. Because of teachers as parental-overseers and the zero tolerance problem people are growing more and more fearful of, and dissatisfied with teachers. If you don't want to be a "crap catcher", then stop shoving it down our throats.
Reply #122 from JoeUser Forums Top
Its not worth it. You're right.
Reply #123 from JoeUser Forums Top

only if you believe history is static and effects suddenly spring into being without causes or in a vacuum.

history is static!  What a stupid statement!  And it was no Vacuum.  One word. Starts with C ends with E and has olumbin in the middle.

That is a vacuum?

Reply #124 from JoeUser Forums Top
history is static! What a stupid statement


yup. the way things are today has nothing to do with the past. nothing that's happening now will affect what happens tomorrow.

what the hell was i thinking?
Reply #125 from JoeUser Forums Top
zero tolerance was bad policy from the jump...it was already metastasizing and infecting the national psyche when the trenchcoat mafia was the training pants mafia.

but don't take my word for it. .Link

HISTORY, DEFINITION, AND PREVALENCE OF ZERO TOLERANCE

It is difficult to find a written definition of the term zero tolerance; certainly the use and meaning of the term have evolved over time. Yet from its inception in federal drug policy of the 1980’s, zero tolerance has been intended primarily as a method of sending a message that certain behaviors will not be tolerated, by punishing all offenses severely, no matter how minor.

Zero tolerance first received national attention as the title of a program developed in 1986 by U.S. Attorney Peter Nunez in San Diego, impounding seagoing vessels carrying any amount of drugs. U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese highlighted the program as a national model in 1988, and ordered customs officials to seize the vehicles and property of anyone crossing the border with even trace amounts of drugs, and charge those individuals in federal court.

The language of zero tolerance seemed to fire the public imagination and within months began to be applied to a broad range of issues, ranging from environmental pollution and trespassing to skateboarding, homelessness, and boom boxes.

Frightened by a seemingly overwhelming tide of violence, educators in the early 1990’s were eager for a no-nonsense response to drugs, gangs, and weapons.

Beginning in 1989, school districts in California, New York, and Kentucky mandated expulsion for drugs, fighting, and gang-related activity. By 1993, zero tolerance policies had been adopted across the country, often broadened to include not only drugs and weapons, but also smoking and school disruption.