How useful/effective really is the zero-tolerance policy on weapons in schools?

School teachers have a professional history of irrationality

You know, that's rather a cheap shot.

And so easy to get away with in an atmosphere where teachers' work is largely unappreciated & denigration is almost a public sport. (In Oz it's known as "teacher bashing".) Yes, I'm sure there are irrational teachers. But things aren't quite so black & white, by a long shot.

There are also examples of irrational parents & family members, you know. Let me illustrate, with a just few examples which I personally know about, in my own "backyard", so to speak:
- A school principal is accosted in his office by a machete-yielding parent, angry at something about the way his son has been treated. (I can't recall the exact nature of the grievance) As well as a tirade of verbal abuse, the parent waves the machete over the principal's head, as if to strike. (I'm not making this up. I used know this principal very well. Or I did, in a previous life.) Police involvement is necessary & a court case ensues. It turns out that the reason for the attack is that the parent (a refuge) suffers from acute stress, as a result of persecution in his homeland. No charges are laid as a result.
- An older brother attacks a teacher in the school car park after school with a baseball bat (having already damaged the teacher's car). He (the brother) is angry because his younger brother received an "unfair" after-school detention the previous day. Police involvement & another court case.
- A group of adolescents have some grievance with a rival group. A "showdown" is planned for after school (damn mobile phones!) At the end of the school day, a packed carload of family (parents, uncles, aunts) arrive, armed with various "weapons", to support "their" boy. Once again, police, court case. This was this year, in a school I teach in.

I could give you quite a few more examples, but let's just say, these sorts of incidents happen. Rather more frequently these days, sadly. And let's just say, I know of few teachers who behave quite so irrationally (as these parents) in the process of doing their jobs. God knows what would happen to them if they did.

My point in posting this? Letting off a bit of steam, I guess. I get so tired of the constant teacher bashing. Everyone being an expert on what's wrong with teaches & schools, but often having so little insight into the realities schools deal with daily.

Sigh. And also to point out the difficulties, in some of the more "troubled" school environments that teachers work under. Some of them somehow manage to do their best & keep trying against all the odds (& I don't just mean crazy parents) & (gasp) actually do a good job.

OK, vent over. Please continue now.

'Twas ever thus.
There is no time in living memory when the dynamics
between students -- teachers -- parents were different.
If someone CHOOSES to enter that profession
then THAT is what he must expect; its a known fact.
If strife is unacceptable to someone, then he shoud select
another employment or change basic human nature.

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By golly, David, your last few posts have made me see the light!

I have been so wrong in my thinking! But all is clear now! You've convinced me, you smooth taking devil!

Teachers are just freedom-hating old grouches who want to stifle kidz' natural spontaneity!
No wonder everyone hates them, hey?

Well, there have been a few times that I have been called upon to teach.
I was not a freedom-hating grouch of any age.

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You're absolutely right! There's absolutely no difference at all
between a child bringing a knife or a pencil to school!

Well, both can be applied to lethal effect. (He can use the knife to sharpen the pencil.)
Repressionists want to disarm citizens, saying that guns or knives
are sometimes used to facilitate crime. They fail to understand
that the actual weapon is the HUMAN MIND, whose cleverness
has not been controlled nor restrained (not even in prison).

This mind expresses itself perseveringly, into the manifestation of
its felt needs or desires, and it has FOREVER to do the job that
it selects (e.g., the art of the gunsmith/knifesmith).
In the 1920s, it was pervasively proven by citizens privately making bathtub gin,
or using Speakeasys (and is proven again now by marijuana users) that Prohibition is futile.

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We should wait and see what they actually do with them (the knives or the pencils)
before unfairly limiting their rights!

That 's the classic legal paradigm,
of many centuries standing, yeah.
For quite a few years, I carried a jack knife in my pocket,
for cutting things, and a small framed .38 revolver; never had any trouble.

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And phooey to "zero tolerance" to anything, too!

Its not a viable alternative.

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You know, I even know of some schools who have zero tolerance
to drugs on the premises! Can you believe that?
(Hey, what's a little pill-sharing, the odd shared joint in the toilets,
a bit of dealing in the school grounds? Just youthful exuberance, I say.)

I remember a case (not one of mine)
wherein an elementary school girl was thrown out for being discovered
with Tylanol (sp?) another child thrown out for possession his asthma inhaler
and someone else for possession of Pepto Bismol.
That 's better left undone.




David wrote:

Quote:

'Twas ever thus.
There is no time in living memory when the dynamics
between students -- teachers -- parents were different.
If someone CHOOSES to enter that profession
then THAT is what he must expect; its a known fact.
If strife is unacceptable to someone, then he shoud select
another employment or change basic human nature.

Quote:

Hey, right again, David! Those situations I mentioned
(the principal threatened by the parent with the machete,

Maybe he didn 't KNOW about the zero tolerance policy!
Did the principal tell him?

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the teacher bashed with a baseball bat in the school car park,
the school that was confronted with the carload of parents &
relatives with weapons) are just part & parcel of the colorful world of education!

That 's well put; I like that.

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Of course those teachers should have expected
such things to happen as part of their job & take it in their stride!
Jeez, they chose a career in teaching, didn't they? What the hell were they expecting?
Utopia or something? Silly sausages.

Thank u; u gave me a good laff. LOL for real!

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Thank you for setting me straight, David. I won't concern myself
with these sorts of issues anymore. Instead I will go out into the
yard and enjoy throwing sweets at the students, [I think thay like cash too; see if that works]


join in on all the spontaneous fun!
Just let what ever happens happen! And that's what real freedom's all about, yes?

U 've got my vote.

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Sorry you had such bad experience with teachers David.

Thay were not all that bad; bell curve distribution,
as woud be expected.

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I had wonderful ones - they provided me with knowledge,
support and affirmation.

Thay gave me the knowledge also. That 's their stock in trade.
It did not occur to me to expect support nor affirmation; just information.

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And that's the reason I decided I wanted to be able to do nothing more
than the same thing for other children.

I looked upon them as people earning a living, delivering information, the same as the mailman.

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I have a feeling that's true about Ms. Olga too.
Monastic misfit? Uh-uh- I can't say that's true about me or many
of the other wonderful teachers I've ever met.

He was teaching about monasticism in the Middle Ages,
and he volunteered, sua sponte that teaching had taken its place
in modern society. I did not dispute him.
I was not going to tell him that I know more about his profession than HE does.

I had a psychology professor in college who asserted that it was a fact
that there is a higher density of defective mental health among
psychologists than any other profession.

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David - just as your highschool teacher put forth his view - one of
my education professors put forth the exact opposite view about
people who choose to become teachers and HE said: 'The people
in this room who are choosing to become teachers are probably
doing so because they had such successful academic and social
careers when they were in school themselves that they don't
want the fun to end - they want to extend it and provide that
for other children - but what you all need to remember is that
the students you will be teaching may not have that positive
view of education and school. School may well be a more
stressful and challenging experience for them, academically
and socially, so despite how wonderful it may have been for you -
please never forget that there are others for whom the experience is different.'

Yes; he was insightful.
That 's very true. I have become aware of children who
are distressed at missing days of school. I enjoyed taking days off.
I got good grades, but I took a lot of time off and went back
to sleep in the morning. I am not a morning person.
I believe that I mentioned to u that, at first, when I was 6 years old,
beginning first grade (I had already dropped out of Kindergarten)
I had a HUGE jurisdictional challenge
in mind, to wit: I demanded of my mother "where in the HELL,
do thay get the right to get ME to go over THERE ??"
whereupon she explained the value of education and I grudgingly accepted it,
but regardless of getting good grades I found little enjoyment in school.
The best part of the school day was the end of it, and the best day
of the school year was the LAST ONE.
I was much taken aback to find out that apparently, some kids today LIKE or even LOVE school.
I was perplexed to find out that being suspended from school was deemed a penalty.
Thay can 't dock your pay.
If I had ever been suspended from school, I 'd have accepted it as a joyful vacation.
I 'd have assumed that all of us felt the same way about it; maybe I was rong.
I never asked around about that.

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I will never forget that. Because school was wonderful for me and I did love it-

WHAT in particular, did u love about it?
What was wonderful about it?

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but if I hadn't already known it - which I did by
watching the experience of other children who went through it
less smoothly than I did - I learned the first day of teaching that
each child comes with his or her own set of extremely unique
circumstances and never to take anyone's situation or behavior for granted.

Yes; true enuf. Even identical twins are not equal to one another.





David

"Sarcastic mode", David?

But I meant every word!

Me, I've had enough of trying to defend the apparently indefensible.

Your views are not so much out of kilter with so many other posters,
on any number of threads concerning a variety of different education issues on this site,
so you must surely be correct.

Teachers are crap. They do everything wrong.

Zachary’s offense? Taking a Cub Scout utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about joining the Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.

I wish I'd become a florist.
That seems a nice, gentle uncontroversial sort of occupation.
I've become really tired of defending teachers. I might just stop doing it.
I think mostly we're OK & do our best. In sometimes not-so-hot circumstances.

yeah next time around you could do something really controversial
like become a child protection worker like i did.
we spent our days plotting how to steal babies from totally innocent upstanding citizens.

dyslexia wrote:

yeah next time around you could do something really controversial
like become a child protection worker like i did.
we spent our days plotting how to steal babies from totally innocent upstanding citizens.

If the citizens' innocence were less than total,
did u leave their babies alone ?





David

Posted: October 13, 2009 at 4:27 PMBy Rachael Larimore

School is where we send our children not only to learn"reading, writing, arithemetic"but also, one would hope, to think. It’s hard to see how kids are supposed to do that, though, when they go to schools where the grown-ups appear incapable of engaging in any form of critical thought or useful decision-making

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Posted: October 13, 2009 at 4:27 PMBy Rachael Larimore

School is where we send our children not only to learn"reading, writing, arithemetic"but also, one would hope, to think. It’s hard to see how kids are supposed to do that, though, when they go to schools where the grown-ups appear incapable of engaging in any form of critical thought or useful decision-making

http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/zero-tolerance-zero-critical-thinking