Why Criminalizing and otherwise Punishing Bullying in Schools is cruel and useless

Perhaps, that was a bit fuzzy, but it was never alleged that she got hit with a can. In any case, we are talking about felony charges here....there is the little issue of proportionality .

The problem is (and I destest any zero tolerance policy) we do have to entrust our school systems to use common sense rather than zero tolerance. Unfortunately what happens is you have one or two or a handful of teachers/administrators that do not have common sense and thus the other reaction in the other direction.

I see, so while you are big enough to own up to your often not living up to your expectations (which is great, I commend you) let a couple of people in the schools be human too and you are ready to defend mandated punitive measures right??

As much as we are not going to get the result that we want every time, we must repect people enough to allow them to be human, to allow them to make mistakes, in the hopes that they will respect us back and learn from their mistakes. Believe it or not, this should include our kids as much as possible as well.

The excessive lawmaking/rule making complete with draconian mandated punitive measures that we see through out our society is a huge mistake.

Actually the point I was trying to make is that the few - those that lack common sense - is what is a big cause of this. I don't agree with should be so drastic because a handful of people are in the wrong positions (ie teachers and administrators that do not have commone sense), we should still entrust those individuals to make common sense decisions. Those that show they lack this trait should be fired as I would hope those entrusted to teach our children have this trait.

I dont agree, I think that most of the time our lack of faith in other people is a projection of our own internal spiritual weakness. I dont think that our drive to standardize and to lay down drastic punitive measures is justified by any rational argument.

Yep, but we cant seem to do it can we...

I'm glad you can think.