Randy Cassingham's Blog

A lot of mail came in last week about my story on the kids suspended (and facing expulsion hearings) for playing with a "weapon" on school grounds -- a squirt gun. A few people didn't understand the story: it was not "about" water guns. It was "about" the "Zero-Tolerance" trend in schools.

There are obviously problems in schools from such things as drugs and violence. But terrorizing children with inflexible rules is not the answer. School principals have always had the responsibility to make and enforce rules, and punish accordingly when those rules are broken. "Zero-Tolerance" laws take that responsibility away. They mandate certain responses that can be way out of proportion to the rule violation in question. That is what these stories are about.

This is True has reported on a fair number of these knee-jerk reactions to non-events. Children are put into the position of being treated as felons by being suspended and/or expelled over obvious toys -- the very same thing that would happen if they brought real guns to school. What happened to the punishment fitting the "crime"? What happened to justice? What happened to the education of these children? ALL of that is being ignored in the name of "Zero-Tolerance" so educators don't actually have to deal with kids being ...well... kids.

Sure, in many cases the kids broke a rule, and those rules have a purpose (e.g., to avoid tragic shootings by police who think the guns are real). Most cases call for, at most, a stern talk in the principal's office -- not suspension, expulsion, police involvement or press conferences (as many of these cases have seen). It seems to me that if we feel a need to expel kids over water guns, there must not be many real problems our society needs to deal with.

It's only 1999, but I've seen enough of the "ZT" stories that the tagline on this story already dubs ZT "zero thought" -- and zero common sense.