

The Bizarre Consequences of "Zero Tolerance" Weapons Policies at Schools - wglb
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/10/the_bizarre_con.html

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jacquesm
This whole thing is starting to get way out of hand. I know a vietnam veteran
that pointed out to me that _everything_ is a weapon.

And he meant it very literally, a rock or a club seem obvious candidates, but
a pencil, a or a piece of electrical wire are less obvious.

My kid sister knocked a guy out when she was 5 with a battery powered dog (he
was harassing me and she figured enough is enough, it seems that when you
don't have a bigger brother a little sister will do just fine).

What much more important than to continue to redefine 'weapon' is to educate
kids to get all this violence under control.

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axod
>> "is to educate kids to get all this violence under control."

I'd replace 'kids' with 'society' there. You can't really go around the world
waging war with countries, bombing the hell out of them, and then act
surprised when kids copy.

Also specifically America really needs to get rid of so much war/military/gun
ownership etc and become a bit more grown up as a nation IMHO. Maybe spend
some of those billions on health care?

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jacquesm
That's a really good point actually. Kids merely emulate what they see the
adults do anyway.

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pmichaud
He's correctly pointed out that zero tolerance is a sort of promiscuous
security method, that applies itself to situations where it should not in
order, the idea goes, that it applies itself to /all/ situations where it
should. It's a policy that says philosophically: we're okay coming down hard
on innocent parties, because that means we won't miss any guilty parties.

Fine, but it's really difficult to study. We can make a list of all the kids
who were caught up unfairly, but how can we make a list of those who were
saved?

I'm not saying I agree with zero tolerance at all -- what I'm saying is that
it's going to be really difficult to kill it, because we can't easily "prove"
that it's doing more harm than good, and it'd require cajones for any
politician to stick his neck out.

Still it's a valid question, even if we can't really answer it: we know that
kids get swept up unfairly, but does the policy do more harm than good
overall?

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electromagnetic
Is this really relevant, or even interesting?

It's a complaint about politics, more over it's a complaint about policies
that were developed by schools with parental approval to 'protect' their
children.

In the UK when the government deployed a nation wide 'zero tolerance' bullying
policy, there was widespread condemnation that it would lead to children being
wrongfully expelled from school. So the real question is: why did it take so
long for Americans to realise 'zero tolerance' policies usually cause more
problems than they help to solve?

