Week 4 Journal
Dr. Byers,
Zero Tolerance
This week I am going to address an issue that seems to be a real problem in our schools, and that is zero tolerance. In the first instance, I heard about these middle-school boys getting into trouble in Omaha. Maybe you heard about this story. There were two or three boys who were playing outside in the backyard. They were getting noisy playing swords and cops and robbers or whatever. After a neighbor lady complained, the mom sent the boys down to the nearby playground. They didn’t belong to this school; however it was the closest playground to their house.
The principal of this school just so happened to be there working on the weekend and was watching the boys. He observed them making gun gestures and going bang bang at each other. Well this particular principal was not amused at their games whatsoever. He brought it upon himself to call the school that the boys attend on the following Monday and alert their principal of what they did. Their principal expelled the boys from school for an entire year!
My boss has two teenage boys and they attend a very small school, small by Omaha’s standards. The oldest boy got in trouble for having a hunting magazine with a gun on it in his possession. The principal called the boy’s father in for a meeting immediately. When confronted, the boy said he had simply checked out this magazine from the school library. After his father learned that it was the school’s magazine no less, the issue was dropped.
Keep in mind that we live in very rural Middle America, and the majority of people out here enjoy hunting as a hobby. This is also the same country where we had teenagers drive their 4-wheel drive pickups to school with a gun rack in the back, so they could shoot rabbits, coyotes, or whatever while in commute. The idea of a gun rack in the back isn’t very old considering my classmates were doing it 10-15 years ago. It is not unusual to see someone wearing camouflage to school. My boss’s son had to go home and change his shirt one day because it said Ruger on it.
This next scenario really takes it over the top. This happened in the same small town. Also keep in mind the new superintendent is a Nazi and installed cameras all over the entire school. This is a real thing that happened to one of our workers son’s. His son was playing out in the yard with another boy. The boy’s mom showed up to pick him up and was standing out in the yard with them. Now I won’t reveal the boy’s name for his sake, but so we don’t get confused I am going to call him Joe in this story. So Joe and his friend are wrestling on the front yard doing what boys do. For whatever reason, Joe grabbed his friend’s mom’s boob. Now I don’t know if he went to hug her and he grazed it or if it was a deliberate grab. I am not really sure. Joe is 13 years old, and normally a very quiet shy boy, who is a genuinely good kid.
The mom didn’t really get upset or think much about, but the next day instead of calling Joe’s parents and allowing them to deal with it, she calls the school counselor. I don’t agree with or understand her thought process there. She claimed she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. So something that maybe could have been solved with a firm talking to and grounding, now involves the school.
The school has a zero tolerance policy. They don’t weigh the facts or the circumstantial evidence and address each issue as it stands; they have this radical idea that all acts should be treated equal. So a sheriff’s deputy shows up at the school and interrogates Joe in a room by himself. Joe being a scared and honest kid admits to what happened. So then the deputy arrests Joe and removes him from the school, takes him into custody, and drags him clear across the state to a children’s prison. Joes is placed behind bars here for two weeks. When his parents visited him, they had to talk through a phone and look at him through glass.
Joe’s parents hired an attorney, and they were able to get him moved to the Boys Town facility in Grand Island. He was held here for at least another week. Meanwhile Social Services came to the house for a four hour interview with Joe’s parents and his sister. The ruling came down to a judge’s decision. If the judge wanted to be harsh, then Joe would have been charged third degree sexual assault and forced to go through a rehabilitation process for at least one year. Fortunately, the judge looked at this case for what it was, and said that this was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard and through the case out. He ordered that Joe be released to his parents immediately.
Joe still couldn’t go back to school right away. For some reason they waited an additional two days and then interviewed him before they let him back in. Now he is faced with the harassment from his classmates. Talk about traumatizing this poor kid. He will never look at a woman again. The boy will be a 50 year old bachelor scared to death to even look at a woman.
Seriously though, I am not saying what he did wasn’t wrong. Yes it was wrong. But that is when parents talk to parents and it is handled within the home, especially when the incident happened at home in the first place! Now I ask you, with these three examples fresh in your mind, what in the heck is wrong with our society/world today? Kids can’t even idealize GI Joe or our American troops because God forbid it might insinuate that they are going to show up the next day and shoot everybody.
These are three examples that clearly show zero tolerance is not the answer. Kids need to be kids, and we cannot let the corrupt insane mentally disturbing acts of these murderers of the masses ruin our children’s youth. We are individuals with unique individual circumstances. In no way should every situation be treated the same. Where is our judiciary system? Where is the justice? Don’t they realize that the people they are hurting the most are our children?
In these three examples, think about how it affected the children. In the first case, these boys miss an entire year of school because they were playing. In the second case, the school is scrutinizing a student for reading material that he checked out of their own library. In the third case, we send a child to prison, tearing up his family for nearly one month, traumatizing him and his sibling, and his classmates because he grabbed a boob.
I am terrified to send my un-born children to school. What has happened to our freedoms and our rights? Is it going to come down to the government telling us what playground games are acceptable? No more cops and robbers because they might say bang bang bang. No more cowboys and Indians because it isn’t acceptable to act like an Indiana. No more GI Joe because they might shoot at imaginary bad guys. But let’s keep corrupting and warping their minds with video games that capitalize on sex, drugs, and violence. Let’s allow them to watch all the TV and play all the video games they want because that doesn’t hurt anybody. Until they snap, kill their mom, and kill 20 helpless defenseless grade schoolers and teachers at Sandy Hook.
They just completed their investigation of that boy’s room that is responsible for the Sandy Hook massacre. They found that he has obsessed with violent video games, chatting on the internet about mass murdering people, and only communicated with his mom through email because he very seldom came out of his room.
Apparently parents can no longer discipline or control their children. All control is left in the school’s hands and their idea of fairness and equality and individuality is zero tolerance. If I didn’t know any better I’d say we are headed straight for socialism.
I think we all need to take a minute, hug our kids, and think about how their environment is impacting their lives.
Thank you, Michelle
