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‘Zero Tolerance’ is intolerable
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Somewhere the spirits of this nation’s pioneers, and most assuredly a shop teacher named Paul Barden are probably spinning and retching and wondering how the lunatics got put in charge of the asylum.
Barden was the laid back shop teacher, who, on at least one occasion I remember with a smile, was asked to cut something, reached into his pocket for a knife, found he didn’t have one and without blinking an eye, looked at me and asked to borrow mine. He knew I had it.
Barden was quite a guy and I never figured that out until much later in life – as usually is the case with teachers we knew – because he had a wry wit, matter-of-fact approach to his job and he could tell the good guys from the bad guys and acted accordingly. Instead of hauling me down to the principal’s office, he cut the cord, carefully folded the blade back into my knife and handed it back. End of story.
What Zachary didn't know was that the gizmo violated his school's zero-tolerance policy on weapons. And now the Christina School District in Newark, Del., has suspended the first grader and ordered him to attend the district's reform school for 45 days.
Barden would probably not be happy in today’s education environment.
One of Barden’s colleagues was Wally Rich, the history teacher who also formed and coached the junior high school rifle team. Another was Robert Arps, the health and gym teacher who annually brought a bunch of guns to school to discuss firearms safety as part of his health class, so the young teens under his tutelage would have an additional reminder before they went hunting with their dads and uncles and grandfathers, or in case they found a gun around the house.
Every one of these guys was an extraordinary role model as well as a teacher. Their generation of educators appears to have been replaced by a culture of ninnies, who have, over the past several years, abandoned common sense and substituted something called “Zero Tolerance,” which translates to zero intelligence.
But the school board, faced with a "firestorm" of protests, changed the policy on Tuesday and said Zachary could return to first grade.
And this brings us around to 6-year-old Zachary Christie, the kid who was booted from a Delaware grade school, then quickly allowed back in with a speedy policy change because he brought his Cub Scout camping utensil to school. The story is now infamous, and it underscores how far we have slipped as a society. It is such a challenging issue that it even ignited a spirited debate on a popular hiking forum, and the “1911TechTalk” chat group on Yahoo has had quite a discussion.
Zachary is a sweet kid, an innocent in every sense. Yet he was treated like a criminal, threatened with 45 days in a reform school and accused of bringing a weapon to school because his camp tool had a fork, spoon and knife blade.
Back in the days of Barden, Rich and Arps, if somebody misbehaved, that kid got punished. None of these guys would have thrown Zachary Christie to the wolves. Instead, they might have counseled him against bringing his valuable tool to school, and failing that, might have advised him to add a drop of oil to the pivot points to keep the utensils functioning properly, and offered to keep it for him until he went home.
Students, and sometimes staff, parents, and other visitors, who possess a banned item for any reason are always punished; school administrators are barred from using their judgment, reducing punishments to fit minor offenses, or considering extenuating circumstances. Consequently, these policies are sometimes derided as zero intelligence policies
Yes, we all know about Columbine. Rich, Arps and Barden would have stopped those two monsters cold, maybe with their own guns. Remember Kip Kinkel, the shooter at Thurston High School in Springfield, OR? A couple of gun-savvy kids saw a break, took him down and beat the daylights out of him. Luke Woodham, the Pearl, MS school shooter was stopped by a gun-wielding vice principal named Joel Myrick.
Such incidents are rare, not because of zero tolerance policies, but in spite of them.
Zachary’s incident happened in Delaware, the state that gave us Joe Biden, which some people might sarcastically say explains a great deal. But this kind of nonsense goes on all over the place, and it is insidious.
The seven-member board voted unanimously to reduce the punishment for kindergartners and first-graders who bring weapons to school or commit other violent offenses to a suspension ranging from three to five days.The need for common sense to prevail over the letter of the law was a recurring theme among the boy's supporters and school safety experts.
Zero tolerance is a product of the same philosophy that supports restrictive gun laws, including bans on certain types of firearms because of their appearance, and so-called “gun free zones” that never seem to prevent killers from entering with guns. Ask anyone who survived the Tacoma Mall shooting, or the Westroads Mall in Omaha. Columbine was a gun free zone, so was Trolley Square in Salt Lake City.
There is a glimmer of hope for educators, and nice boys like Zachary. NBC and The Week are reporting today that the school board at Zachary’s Christina School District in Newark felt the heat of public wrath, so they changed the policy Tuesday night and let the kid back into school. Don’t be misled; this was not a sudden epiphany of common sense, but a clear case of damage control.
Teachers can be inspirational, they can be mentors, and they can be friends. Administrators can be leaders, counselors and protectors. But so long as they enforce zero tolerance policies, the lesson they teach above all the others is one of intolerance.
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