One of Peter Paul and Mary's famous songs asked the question "Where have all the flowers gone?"
While reading another instance of Zero Tolerance I wondered "Where have all the adults gone?"
Shane Finn is a 14 year old austistic boy. He drew a picture of one stick figure shooting another. He labled the shooter as himself and the stick figure victim as the teacher. OK, this isn't a nice thing to do. But in our hyper sensitive society now the boy is facing criminal charges.
One article reports "School authorities could not say much about the student because of privacy laws, but they did confirm that Shane will face a tribunal and is being charged with making terroristic threats."
Think about that for a minute. A 14 year old austic boy is facing charges of making terroristic threats. Where have all the adults gone?
Isn't there one adult left in the school? Couldn't someone just say drop it and move on?
The song "Where have all the flowers gone?" ends by asking another question "When will they ever learn?"
I wonder if we'll ever learn that zero tolerance can be carried too far?
(Hat tip: Best of the Web Today)
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Technorati tags: parenting, children, education, government schools, public school, public education
5 comments:
[sheesh]
Okay, if a kid drew a picture of him shooting me, I'd definitely explain that it was inappropriate. I'd keep an eye out for any actual violent tendencies. But to label him a terrorist and put him on trial is simply ridiculous. Seriously, people. Grow up.
~Luke
I hear ya! Three little boys that I tutor were playing "army" at break time and one boy told his mother that he was smothered by the other two. The other two had no idea he had felt smothered. They were using pillows for sandbags during the battle! The little boy told his school teacher and the teacher thought that all three boys needed to be sent to a counselor so the two naughty boys could be dealt with for bullying! I refused! Do you see the reprecussions of this? It happened in my home not at the school!!! Whoa! That will be the day when the school feels like they can reach their long arms into my home!
Luke - I agree that what the boy did was wrong, but the school's response is way over the top. Just amazing.
Mrs. Darling - Wow! I don't remember too many times when government schools felt they should be involved with incidents that happened off campus. I'm afraid we'll be hearing more. The Nanny State just seems to keep growing.
All zero-tolerance policies are too far. They take the judgement out of dealing with imperfect people. Why are they so popular? Because if there is no human judgement, and only one policy - there isn't room for lawsuits for unjust punishment. We need to stand up for (flawed) human judgements instead of arbitrary policies.
K - you make a great point. Blanketed application of some rule often is a bad idea.
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