http://www.truthout.org/10200910# Once seen as an invaluable public good and laboratory for critical learning and engaged citizenship, public schools are increasingly viewed as a site of crime, warehouses or containment centers. Consequently, students are also reconceived through the optic of crime as populations to be managed and controlled primarily by security forces. In accordance with this perception of students as potential criminals and the school as a site of disorder and delinquency, schools across the country since the 1980's have implemented zero tolerance policies that involve automatic imposition of severe penalties for first offenses of a wide range of undesirable, but often harmless, behaviors. Based on the assumption that schools are rife with crime and fueled by the emergence of a number of state and federal laws such as the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, mandatory sentencing legislation and the popular "three strikes and you're out" policy, many educators first invoked zero tolerance rules against kids who brought firearms to schools - this was exacerbated by the high-profile school shootings in the mid-1990's, the tragic shootings at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, and the more recent shootings at Virginia Tech.
But as the climate of fear increased, the assumption that schools were dealing with a new breed of student - violent, amoral and apathetic - began to take hold in the public imagination. Moreover, as school safety become a top educational priority, zero tolerance policies were broadened and now include a range of behavioral infractions that encompass everything from possessing drugs or weapons to threatening other students - all broadly conceived. Under zero tolerance policies, forms of punishments that were once applied to adults now apply to first graders. Students who violate what appears to be the most minor rules - such as a dress code violation - are increasingly subjected to zero tolerance laws that have a disparate impact on students of color while being needlessly punitive.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
