Zero Tolerance? CYA!

Joe Woe’s latest rant (see “Dangerous Doodles” below) concerning “Zero Intelligence (Tolerance)” policies in the public schools has its heart in the right place, but the arrow of blame is slightly off the mark.

I was familiar with this most recent episode at Payne Junior High in Arizona via James Taranto’s “Zero Tolerance Watch” in the Wall Street Journal Online blog. Unfortunately, these incidents of vanishing common sense occur with such regularity as to warrant an ongoing feature in his column. The Payne Junior High sketch of a “laser pistol of some sort” is only the latest, but certainly not the most egregious.

As Taranto quipped “Somebody must have told the School Board that ‘drawing a gun’ was dangerous. School Boards have correctly identified a “danger”, but their remaining common sense assures them it’s not a danger to the students in their charge, but rather a danger to their budgets, their legal bills and the thing that they value highest: their careers.

This is the appalling legacy of Columbine – an educational system so frightened of litigation that it negatively affects every aspect of its core mission of teaching students.

With every new (and it must be pointed out – rare) horrendous incident of violence at a school, I have no doubt of the sincere heartbreak and agony felt by administrators and teachers for the victims, as they wring their hands and beseech “what could we have done to prevent this?” – followed immediately by a paralyzing fear of crucifixion in the courts of law and public opinion.

I have some first–hand experience in the administration and governance of schools – albeit, private schools. I can assure you that the burden of legal protection from real or perceived faults of the teachers and administrators weighs heavily on most decisions that must be taken. At our modest private elementary school, located in the sleepy burg of Topeka Kansas, we had parents who wanted eight–foot tall chain link fences and armed guards at the door and other parents who wanted no security whatsoever (That wasn’t the kind of school they wanted THEIR children to attend). The governing board had to attempt to square this intractable circle. Our little school had only a couple of administrators and less than twenty teachers – but we had a dedicated legal counsel.

No, the fault here is not lily–livered dolts running our schools, but rather the litigious “gotta blame and sue somebody” mentality that has taken hold of our modern culture. I accuse the ambulance–chasing trial lawyers (like John Edwards) with their TV ads encouraging every jamoke with a pain or a grievance to sue their perceived enemies into oblivion. I accuse popular movies like “Erin Brockovich” which glamorize these tort–bar–bastards as selfless heroes. And I particularly accuse the otherwise upstanding Americans who decide to assuage their pain and loss by suing the pants off somebody.

In the mean time every school board is advised by their legal counsel to institute “zero tolerance” and other nonsensical schemes, not to protect the children, but to protect their own wary behinds.