> in US culture and society that makes it so hostile towards
As far as schools go, zero tolerance policies have been put in place. The concept of zero tolerance is something that just makes no sense to me. Not every thing that happens in a school needs police involvement, but because the rules/laws that have been put in place removes common sense and power from principals so that everything is now a police matter.
Legislatures have done similar things to judges with mandatory minimums and other draconian small minded knee jerk reaction to look like they are being effective.
In the 80s, kids would have bows or hunting rifles in the car or truck in the school parking lot. Now eating your pastry the wrong way gets you sent home.
In the early 2000s my middle school had archery for a few days as part of gym class as a special event. Only the girls were actually allowed to do it though, they had something else for the boys (don't remember what though).
Same was true in my middle school in the 80s. In hindsight it really was the right call. That same year we had a sub in gym class playing tennis and four of us boys managed to launch about a hundred tennis balls over the fence and into the woods home run derby style. We would have definitely put an eye out with archery equipment.
Zero tolerance policies are a direct response to discrimination claims.
If you allow people to have discretion, then it will be used(and abused).
Also some of the stories I hear about school in the 70's and 80's make me think that the current claim that "schools were always authoritarian and used to subjugate children to turn them into compliant workers" is probably BS.
Probably current administration needs to justify it's existence and high pay by making rules.
> Zero tolerance policies are a direct response to discrimination claims.
Source? Because if that's true, that's the wrong implementation of a great policy (anti-discrimination).
That's basically saying "well instead of having a policy of reasonable punishment for a given situation, we'd rather be as extreme in our punishment as possible so that we can still hurt kids we hate"
From wiki on Zero Tolerance, specifically talking about harrasment:
>Various institutions have undertaken zero tolerance policies such as in the military, in the workplace, and in schools in an effort to eliminate various kinds of illegal behavior such as harassment. Proponents hope that such policies will underscore the commitment of administrators to prevent such behavior.
It leaves out how when we went into these things, there was outcry over administrators covering up harassment, showing favoritism, etc.
If there is a fight between 2 kids, one kid gets expelled and the other does not, this situation can seem unbalanced.
As far as schools go, zero tolerance policies have been put in place. The concept of zero tolerance is something that just makes no sense to me. Not every thing that happens in a school needs police involvement, but because the rules/laws that have been put in place removes common sense and power from principals so that everything is now a police matter.
Legislatures have done similar things to judges with mandatory minimums and other draconian small minded knee jerk reaction to look like they are being effective.