The Archives of
Zero-Tolerance Watch
From February and March.

Friday, May 18, 2001 12:01 A.M. EDT

(Editor's note: The following reports appeared in OpinionJournal's Best of the Web Today feature. Click on the date to read that day's full Best of the Web. Click here to read reports for April 2 through 13, here for April 16 through 27, here for April 30 through May 11 and here for May 14 on. Links were good at the time we posted the columns, but they often go bad after a while. We make no guarantees.)

Thusday, February 1, 2001

Fowl Play
In Jonesboro, Ark., eight-year-old Christopher Kissinger has been suspended from South Elementary School for three days. Christopher's crime: pointing a breaded chicken finger at a teacher and saying "Pow, pow, pow." The Associated Press reports that "the incident apparently violated the Jonesboro School District's zero-tolerance policy against weapons."

Nearby Westside Middle School was the site of a 1998 shooting in which four students and a teacher were killed. No poultry was involved in that crime.

Thursday, March 22, 2001

New Menace to Our Children: Paper Guns
In Irvington, N.J., two eight-year-olds have been charged with "making terrorist threats." The boys were "playing cops and robbers with a paper gun," the Associated Press reports. "Authorities said that 8-year-old Hamadi Alston stood up at his desk at Augusta Street School last Thursday, pointed paper folded to look like a gun at his classmates and said, 'I'm going to kill you all.' "

The AP adds that "Police Chief Steven Palamara . . . defended school officials and the district's zero-tolerance policy." You may laugh, but paper guns are particularly dangerous. Because they're made of paper, a miscreant can slip them right past metal detectors. The citizens of Irvington are lucky to have Chief Palamara on the job. He and his force are such excellent crime-fighters that there hasn't been a single homicide with a paper gun in all of Irvington so far in 2001. How many other cities can boast such a record?

Monday, March 26, 2001

Zero-Tolerance Madness
We've noted with amusement several cases of schools' "zero tolerance" policies gone nuts, including the January story of an eight-year-old Jonesboro, Ark., boy suspended from school for brandishing a piece of chicken and last week's Irvington, N.J., case in which two eight-year-olds were charged with "making terroristic threats" for playing with paper guns. These stories have become so common, though, that the joke is starting to get old--and their frequency leads us to suspect that they're something more than isolated cases of bureaucratic idiocy.

Just this weekend, we read about a case in West Monroe, La., in which an eight-year-old third-grader at Lenwil Elementary School was suspended from school for drawing weapons. We mean drawing them--as in illustrating, sketching, depicting. No actual weapons were involved. According to a report in Saturday's Monroe News-Star:

Edward Davis, principal of Lenwil, described the drawing that landed the pupil in-school suspension on Thursday as upsetting. It is a soldier holding a canteen in one hand and a knife in the other.

The 8-year-old honor student also drew a fort with a list of stocked inventory. Among items listed on the drawing were 5,000 knives, 200 M-16s, 109 pistols and 67 first aid kits.

Raleigh Walker, the unnamed boy's father, told the paper that "his son drew the picture as a tribute to a relative who was in the Army." But the principal said, "We have zero tolerance for drawings with guns. We can't tolerate anything that has to do with guns or knives." The boy's punishment was comparatively mild; he was placed on "in-school suspension."

Then we read a column in which Joe Soucheray of the St. Paul Pioneer Press tells the following story:

The other day I got a note from a guy whose second-grader threw a snowball on the playground. The second-grader was hauled to the school office and told to fill out a "restitution form," on which the child was expected to come up with two ways to address his "inappropriate behavior." One of the ways the kid came up with was to "stand on the blacktop." The other way he came up with was "play with balls," meaning soccer balls and basketballs and the like. Smart kid. He was going to do his best to stay away from snow. Well, a week went by and the father called me back to say that the kid was in trouble again.

"Puddles," the dad told me.

"Puddles?"

"He was standing on the black top and the puddle got the best of him," the dad said. "He made a snowball from the mushy stuff near the puddle and then rolled the snowball down the slide into the puddle. They hauled him in again."

What in the world is going on? In many of these cases, cops or school officials explain, with no evident irony, that they're trying to prevent another Columbine. Defending the Louisiana boy's suspension, Willie Isby, director of Child Welfare and Attendance for the Ouachita Parish School System, declared, "The punishment is not that bad in this case, in light of the fact that we have been having all these killings in schools." And in the Irvington case, superintendent Ernest Smith said: "Being that kids are being shot in schools across the country, children have to be taught they can't say certain words in public."

One of the paper-brandishing Garden State moppets is reported to have stood up during class and announced, "I'm going to kill you all." That's certainly an inappropriate thing to say, and we don't quarrel with the idea that an eight-year-old who says it in class ought to be disciplined. But it is an insane overreaction to call in cops and prosecutors and charge little kids with terrorism when they were armed with nothing more than pieces of paper.

The notion that having "zero tolerance" of second- and third-graders engaging in harmless play is going to do anything to stop high-schoolers from shooting up their schools is sheer lunacy. And such policies do have a potential cost; it's hard to see how they can do anything other than sow moral confusion among young children.

How are parents supposed to teach their children right from wrong when they are subjected to school rules that are completely unhinged from common sense? Raleigh Walker, the father of the Louisiana eight-year-old, told the News-Star: "My son was upset all yesterday. I had to explain to him that owning guns and being in the Army is not bad." These eight-year-olds will be teenagers by 2006. Can we expect them to have any respect for adult authority when they have seen it exercised in such a capricious way?

The American Bar Association's ABA Journal last year published an article, "Zero Tolerance, Zero Sense," urging schools to drop zero-tolerance policies and recounting yet more horror stories. The ABA's points are well-taken, but the legal profession deserves a hefty share of the blame. As Kay Hymowitz pointed out last year in City Journal, zero-tolerance policies grew out of "a kind of bureaucratic mania" when school official feared that "the growing public clamor for safe schools could spawn a new generation of future lawsuits."

We salute the good sense of Soucheray, the St. Paul scribe, who concludes his column this way: "For all you readers who disapprove of my anachronistic thinking, would you please tell me which aspect of modern psychobabble education actually works? Is it the self-esteem part? The it-takes-a-village part? The zero-tolerance-including-snowballs part?"

The Dream Police
Zero-tolerance fever has spread north of the border, too. The Edmonton Journal reports that 17-year-old Keri Clarke of Keg River, Alberta, was suspended from high school for five days after he told his gym teacher about a dream he had had in which he punched the teacher. "Clarke said school officials told him the suspension was because of recent violent incidents in other schools across the continent," the Journal reports. "But he says their fears are unfounded. 'I wouldn't shoot nobody--I'm scared to go to jail.' "

This is not as obviously preposterous as punishing an eight-year-old for drawing a picture or throwing a snowball; after all, a 17-year-old could pose a real threat to an adult. But if Clarke genuinely endangered the teacher, a five-day suspension seems shockingly lenient. If he did not, as seems to have been the case, it seems unduly harsh.

Tuesday, March 27, 2001

Dogging Tag
A Maryland elementary school has banned the game of tag. Joan Briscoe, principal of West Annapolis Elementary, tells the Capital newspaper that the game violates the school's "no touching" policy. But the paper reports that "although the county's sexual harassment policy does prohibit 'unwanted' touching," there is no blanket ban on touching. Huntley Cross, an Anne Arundel County school administrator, tells the Capital: "There are good touches and bad touches that children are taught."

Wednesday, March 28, 2001

'Copycat Drawings'
One purpose of the press in a free society is to expose the foibles of those in authority. When a bureaucrat uses his power in a stupid and abusive way, journalists inform the public, and the ensuing ridicule shames the foolish functionary into changing his ways. That's the way it's supposed to work, anyway. Alas, bureaucrats, like other human beings, are susceptible to the sin of pride, and some of them react to exposure by insisting they've done nothing wrong, indeed redoubling their stupidity.

Such a man is Willie Isby, director of child welfare and attendance for the Ouachita Parish school system in northern Louisiana. On Monday, you'll remember, we noted the story of an eight-year-old boy at Lenwil Elementary who was put on "in-school suspension" for drawing a picture of a soldier holding a knife. Other national media have picked up the story, leading to a follow-up in the Monroe News-Star, in which the obtuse Isby not only says he doesn't understand what all the fuss is about, but actually vows to suppress "copycat drawings." No kidding:

Isby added that since the incident, copycat drawings have surfaced. Students who are thinking about drawing their version of commando man better think twice. "We have some other students doing the same thing," Isby said. "If you put one in in-house suspension for doing it, you have to put all. It's only fair. You can't be inconsistent."

Isby doesn't feel the hard-nosed approach to zero tolerance is too harsh. "It will show that we are serious about nonviolence in the schools," Isby said. "If parents know that we are concerned about even the smaller, minute things, then they certainly will be aware that we will take action on something even more dangerous to the school and the child."

Give us a break. No one who thinks an eight-year-old's drawings are "dangerous" is serious about anything.

'It Does Not Cover Graffiti'
In fairness, we should note that there are plenty of parents who are just as ridiculously timorous as the zero-tolerating petty tyrants. The Southern Illinoisan reports that some 30 students at Carbondale Community High School were kept home Monday for fear of a graffito:

Between 6 p.m. Saturday and 10:30 a.m. Sunday, someone used orange spray paint to write "Today I hate everything" on the south wall of Carbondale Community High School's main wall. The graffiti, written in 3-foot-tall lettering, was not removed until 9 a.m. Monday, well after students arrived and well within view from High Street. . . .

Principal John Dively estimated that some 30 students stayed home Monday because of the graffiti. Although the district has a school safety plan in place to cover such emergencies as shootings or earthquakes, "it does not cover graffiti," Dively said.

Hey Principal Dively, may we offer a suggestion? If you want to cover graffiti, you don't need a "school safety plan." You need some paint!

'Tennis Ball Bomb'
In Salem, Ore., three 16-year-old boys are headed to juvenile court on Class A misdemeanor charges of "multiple counts of menacing and possession of a hoax destructive device," the Salem Statesman Journal reports:

Lt. Debbie Baker said the incident occurred about 4 p.m. March 9 on the tennis courts at Sprague High School, where six members of the team were practicing. Three boys threw a tennis ball on the court, yelled "tennis ball bomb," and ran away, Baker said.

Sprague Principal Dan McMinimee said the ball, which had been altered only slightly, "was quickly identified as a hoax." No students ever were in danger, he said, but the school did turn over the ball to Salem police. "We take all instances seriously," McMinimee said.

Consultant Lisa Faulkingham gently reminded students that their play, though organized, is still play. "There is no big book somewhere that says 'Aroochycha' has to be played like this," Faulkingham said. . . .

Parent Margaret Harris watched to the side, taking notes with a pad of paper and pen. This effort began last year as a playground safety measure, but she soon realized that what she considered ordinary child's play is also a form education, Harris said. . . . "You don't see kids out playing anymore," Harris said.

Without this free play, even well-educated and well-rounded children can be incomplete, said Colleen Morey, who coordinates district physical education programs. Unless they're taught, children may be too impatient to work with other human beings. Some learn that taunts, teasing and even bullying [are] acceptable, while their victims may not know how to cope. On a rare occasion, some children lash out violently.

This suggests a variation of an old consultant joke:

Q. How many consultants does it take to prevent a school shooting?
A. That depends. How much money is in your education budget?

Thursday, March 29, 2001

The Soldier Drawing, Revealed!
If you've been reading this column for the past few days, you've probably been dying to see that forbidden drawing, the one that landed an eight-year-old West Monroe, La., boy in hot water. Well, here it is. You decide: Is this the work of an incipient psycho killer? Do you agree with the great Willie Isby, director of child welfare and attendance for the Ouachita Parish school system, that it is "dangerous"?

Another Kid Suspended for Drawing
We've also heard of another forbidden-picture case, this one from Flagler County, Fla. On March 14 the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that "a fourth-grader at Bunnell Elementary School received a 10-day suspension for drawing a picture of himself shooting another pupil with a laser gun":

A report from the Flagler County Sheriff's Office said the 9-year-old drew the picture and left it on his desk Thursday while he went to the restroom. Another pupil picked up the picture and took it to the teacher, Joann Hitz.

The report said Hitz "was so concerned with the content of the picture" she gave it to two other pupils to take to [Principal Kate] Godbee and Assistant Principal Phyllis Pearson. Godbee issued the suspension.

Flagler County schools superintendent Robert Williams told the News-Journal: "We are looking to find some help for the child. We are looking at some counseling. We are not taking this lightly." Well, check out the picture for yourself; the sheriff's office provided it to the News-Journal. Again, does this appear to be the work of a bedlamite who needs "counseling," or of a normal nine-year-old boy? And if the picture is so incendiary, why is the sheriff handing out copies to the press?

What's sad about this story, though, is the reaction of the boy's father, Ken Fisher. Unlike the Louisiana dad, Raleigh Walker, who has responded with hearty indignation, Fisher seems entirely willing to accept this nonsense. "With all that's been going on in the schools everywhere--the shootings--I'm not surprised that the school would react this way," he told the paper. "We don't have guns in our house, and my son has not been around guns. He will go to some counseling, which he'll pass with flying colors, and then he'll be back in school."

C'mon, Fisher, show some backbone. Don't let them push your boy around this way. What lesson are you teaching him when you stand for such treatment?

Make a List, Go to Jail
In case you haven't noticed, we're rather frustrated with the pettifogging autocrats who run America's schools. Having said that, we sure are glad we aren't middle-school students in Douglas County, Nev. There, even saying you're frustrated will call down the wrath of the administration. Check out this Associated Press dispatch:

RENO, Nev.--The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada has criticized a 10-day suspension handed down to a Gardnerville girl for compiling a list of classmates with whom she's "frustrated."

Richard Siegel, the ACLU's state president, on March 25 accused Douglas County school officials of overstepping their bounds and overreacting to the recent school shootings in San Diego County.

The Pau-Wa-Lu Middle School student was not taken into custody because a sheriff's investigation last week concluded there was no immediate threat, said school Principal Robbin Pedrett. The girl did not have access to guns or ammunition, and it's unclear if she directly threatened anyone, Pedrett said. The girl regrets writing the list, she added.

The principal--surprise, surprise--acts as if this is an entirely reasonable action to take to prevent bloodshed. "It's easy for the ACLU to say something when they don't have 800 students and 42 teachers," she tells the AP. "We don't want a school shooting in our county, and we would rather err on the side of student safety."

Just to be safe, Pedrett is also interrogating everyone on the suspended girl's list! The listed students, the AP reports, "also could face discipline, depending on the outcome of a continuing investigation." As Pedrett puts it: "We owe it to our student body to investigate and that's what we're doing. Our concern is to see if she [the suspended student] is safe and the others are safe. We're trying to see how real the threat is."

Probably about as real as the threat posed by 11-year-old Joshua Diaz of Central Falls, R.I. The Providence Journal reports that officials at the Ella Risk Elementary School called in the cops to question Joshua over an old Christmas list:

Joshua said that his teacher asked him to clean out his desk March 19. While doing so after school that day, he found a Secret Santa Christmas list that had on it the names of students who were going to buy each other Christmas gifts.

Joshua bragged to his friend that his Christmas list was older than a piece of paper the friend had found in his desk. He then threw the Christmas list away. But another student in the classroom thought he heard something different.

By the time Joshua got to school the next day, rumors were flying that he had a hit list. "They asked me if I had a hit list and if I was going to beat up the boys and the girls," he said. His teacher and principal then questioned him about the list, and he explained that it was a gift list.

Maureen Chevrette, superintendent of the Central Falls Schools, tells the Journal that "we had already determined it was not a hit list." School officials called in a policeman anyway, then didn't bother informing Joshua's mother her son had been interrogated until two days later. Meanwhile, Rhode Island State Police are searching for a fugitive atop their most-wanted list. The suspect is described as an elderly, heavyset Caucasian male with a long, white beard and a red suit. He is wanted on one count of making a list and two counts of checking it.

Get Out of Dodge
The Boston Globe reports a nationwide drive is under way to abolish the game of dodgeball:

"Anytime you throw an object at somebody it creates an environment of retaliation and resentment," said Thomas Murphy, physical education teacher at Tobin Elementary School in Cambridge. "There is nothing positive that can happen except a bully gets to beat up on little kids." . . . In Buxton, Maine, dance and physical education instructor MaryEllen Schaper challenges new students not familiar with her strict, no-dodgeball philosophy with this question: "Where else in real life can you throw something at someone with the intention of hitting them and eliminating them?"

Rick Hanetho, co-director of the National Amateur Dodgeball Association, asks the Globe: "What's next? Will hopscotch be outlawed?" Rick, don't give them any ideas.

Courting Disaster?
We heard from a couple of readers in Salem, Ore., who objected to our including the story of the "tennis-ball bomb" hoax in yesterday's roster of lunatic school-discipline cases. Dave Moss writes:

I enjoy tremendously your popping the balloons of pomposity regarding school "violence," but I think we do need to be fair to the folks at Sprague High School. About a month ago, a tennis-ball bomb blew off the head of a pet dog in Portland, Ore., and a week later two real tennis-ball bombs were found on the playgrounds of two Salem elementary schools.

We'll meet our critics halfway on this one. Given the recent history Mr. Moss cites, the prank was certainly out of bounds, and some disciplinary action would seem to have been in order. Still, hauling the youngsters to criminal court strikes us as overly harsh. These were 16-year-old pranksters, not actual bombers (they were from a rival high school). Surely a stern warning would have served the purpose of deterring future such tomfoolery, and it would have kept the whole incident out of the papers.

By the way, when those tennis-ball bombs go off, we'll bet they make quite a racket!

Friday, March 30, 2001

Pretend Drugs
In a highly publicized case a few years ago, an Ohio junior high school suspended a 13-year-old girl for violating the school's "zero tolerance" antidrug policy. The drug in question was not cocaine, pot or even alcohol but Midol, an over-the-counter remedy for menstrual cramps. Now, in a little-publicized case (we couldn't even find a link to a story about it on the Web), an elementary school in Harrison, Maine, has gone one better. Yesterday's Providence Journal carried the following Associated Press dispatch:

The mother of a Harrison Elementary School sixth grader says administrators overreacted when they suspended her son and two schoolmates for violating a zero-tolerance drug policy by using a breath mint to play a joke on a friend. According to Christine Hurd, the punishment was an outgrowth of a March 16 incident in which her son offered a friend a hot breath mint. She said the boy asked her son what the tablet was and her son replied, "Just Advil." Supt. Mark Eastman said school policy barred students from pretending that something is a drug and then giving it or selling it to someone.

A 'Terrorist' Essay
Columnist Thomas Sowell notes the case of an 11-year-old boy who was arrested on suspicion of making terrorist threats. (Some background is in this story from the San Francisco Chronicle.) The boy's teacher at Belle Haven Elementary School assigned him to write an essay on "What would you do if you had just three days to live?," and, as Sowell recounts, "he wrote about people he would kill during those hypothetical three days." We're wondering why no one arrested the teacher. It's hard to imagine the zero-tolerators would stand for a student talking, even hypothetically, about his peers having "only three days to live." It's certainly no less threatening than, say, making a list of students who "frustrate" you.

'A Scene of Unimaginable Horrors'
Writing in the Staten Island (N.Y.) Advance, columnist James Lileks makes clear that zero-tolerance mania is a contemporary fad:

In a Fargo, N.D., elementary school, a fourth-grader was observed drawing a scene of unimaginable horrors: Death by drowning; death by explosions; death by crushing; death by impalement, etc. He cheerfully admitted he got the idea from a movie--a film shown in prime time with no warnings. Here's the frightening part: No disciplinary action was taken. No counselors were call

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