CNN reports on Alexa, a 12 year old student in New York. She wrote with a green marker on her desk, "I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 :)"
Because of a zero tolerance policy, she was cuffed and marched out of the classroom in front of her peers. She was taken to the police station across the street.
No one wants kids defacing school property. Kids should be held accountable for their transgressions. However, humiliation really doesn't help kids change their behavior. Humiliation helps kids not want to go to school at all.
In the past the schools handled situations like Alexa's. She would have been sent to the prinicipal's office or maybe the counselor's office to be given the appropriate punishment--In School Suspension or maybe out of school suspension. Certainly, cleaning the desk and apologizing to the teacher and/or students. But handcuffs?
This is a girl who hadn't been in trouble before.
Anyone reading this ever doodle absentmindedly? (This Examiner's hand is raised. Okay, both hands.)
Yet, what should schools do? When most of us were in school it was pre-Columbine. We expect, no we demand, schools keep our kids safe, but at the same time we don't want schools, or police, to overreact. What's the answer?
The conversation continues with you.
Comments
Is Columbine an excuse for every over-controlling episode in schools today? The gap between high school boys shooting their schoolmates and teachers and a 12-year-old with a Magic Marker seems pretty wide. The big problem with Zero Tolerance is that it creates a zero leaway and predetermines the response that school administrators and teachers have to make to often complex situations. The result is mandated overreaction that is self-defeating. What lesson did this child learn? That she shouldn't deface school property? Or that school officials and the police are bullies who overreact to the slightest provocation? In the future is she likely to become a better person or a more secretive one, who refuses to cooperate or trust school officials and police?
Did you say cuffed and hauled off? Surely there is more to the story - -this has to be like one of those Drudge headlines -- totally misleding.
But -- if she had been cuffed and hauled off, of COURSE it's insane, you are insane for even asking if it's overkill.
I agree 100% with Bert. ^^ This is absurd and a completely rediculous way of handling the situation. How many kids have marked their names on bathroom stalls? How many kids have carved their initials into a bench or tree? I'm not saying it shouldn't be addressed, but appropriately. Come on I mean, they treated her with the same manner they would had she brought a knife or other weapon to class. An appalling overreaction, to be sure.
Zero tolerance is mainly for the benefit of teachers unions and administrators: it absolves them of any requirement to think or use their own judgement.
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