Zero Tolerance vs Sane Society.

POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Thursday, October 9, 2025 16:37
VIEWED: 4170
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FREMDFIRMA

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 11:42 PM

This one especially for Rue and Siggy, since it's finally some clue that folks are beginning to "get it" and comprehend the insanity behind the insanity.

The Stupidity of "Zero-Tolerance": 6-Year-Old Suspended For Bringing Food Utensil to School
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/143213/the_stupidity_of_%22zero-tol
erance%22:_6-year-old_suspended_for_bringing_food_utensil_to_school

Selected Bits...

Ames argues -- quite convincingly -- that schoolyard and office massacres are modern-day slave rebellions. The overly oppressive and exploitive nature of hyper-Capitalism, the neutering of unions, and the overall degradation of employees, neighborhoods, communities, and society have resulted in a culture of fear and violence.

The opposite approach, which is the current "solution" of treating workers and students like suspects, is an excellent way to breed more paranoia, fear, and violence. If kids weren't ready to snap before, a day of bag inspections, metal detector, and locker searches guarantees they’ll at least hate their schools if not harbor fantasies of putting down their oppressors.

Schools are not boot camps, and children need to be shown compassion and love, or they will never offer their fellow citizens similar kindness when they develop into fully formed humans. If you show children nothing but cruelty, and intolerance, then they repeat that behavior and grow up to become Republicans.

Allison here ABSOLUTELY nails it dead square, although I myself am leery of assigning particular political bents to behavior rampant in all of them.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

BYTEMITE

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 11:56 PM

Ooh, that is nice, and all too true. No comments myself on the Republican thing, but nail on the head everywhere else.

But something else we need to look out for in schools is how school structure perpetuates hierarchies. Often these are pre-existing and exist through the negligence and even endorsement of administrators, but sometimes these are completely student generated.

Every person in a school is going to have a group that they relate more to, interests wise. Cliques are inevitable. But where it gets stupid is allowing hostility between cliques to fester.

FREMDFIRMA

Thursday, October 15, 2009 12:09 AM

Or deliberately encouraging it in order to keep the occupied fighting each other, as an excuse to demand more budget money for "security" and hiring goons to become the "powers that be" factions gang.

I could go on for WEEKS about it - especially as one of the second chance schools I went to, the Administrator was in fact a former prison warden and saw very little difference in her new assignment.

The Sudbury schools model is something we desperately need to be adapting if we want real change on this front.

-F

FREMDFIRMA

Thursday, October 15, 2009 9:47 AM

Hmm, todays piece by Jim Davies goes further along these lines, and adds another dimension to it which makes a whole lot of sense.

Human Nature
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/davies/davies4.html

"If humans really were evil--if some variation of "original sin" is a fact of our existence, then I would have to suggest that we on STR are wasting our time, dreaming impossible dreams. We might just as well, being unable to beat 'em, join 'em. Let's eat, drink, make merry, for tomorrow we'll certainly die; in fact on that assumption (that humans are evil at root) there is hardly a shred of hope that the race will outlive the Century, given the very large array of WMDs that already exists and which is fast proliferating. I do not say any government will deliberately use them, for its leaders would die along with everyone else - but I do say their use by accident or by suicidal religious fanatics - of whom we hear more every day - is inevitable. For as long as governments continue to exist.

That horrid outcome is of course no evidence at all that the assumption is wrong. It simply says that if it's right, doom is unavoidable and we should stop pretending otherwise.

That too is why it matters, for us to understand human nature.

My view is that the assumption is dead wrong; that humans are basically good, not evil, and that humans do evil things only when they acquire power over other people. That's true on an individual level, and true much more commonly at every level of government, which is in its essential nature a violent organization, based entirely on the false premise that it has some right to exist and govern, or to exercise power over other humans.

Yep, give em a badge and a gun, a robe and gavel, or an office and a title - and sure as day follows dawn, it comes to evil eventually.

So why not eliminate the things that lead to it ?

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

RIVERLOVE

Thursday, October 15, 2009 2:44 PM

There's another case now in NY involving a 16 year old....he's an Honors student and an Eagle Scout. He had a Scout knife locked inside a utility case locked inside a car. Somehow "they" found it and have now suspended him. How is a knife that is locked up in a car any of their gorram business? Isn't the gorram tire iron and jack more a dangerous weapon than a 2" pen knife? Shit, you could extend that to the cigarette lighter or even the ashtray itself, as either could be used as a weapon. How would they have even known to look for the Scout knife? And why would the car owner allow for search & seizure with no probable cause? These instances are beyond insanity; it is zero-tolerance fascist bullshit, which means that "professionals", aka teachers, don't have to think, and don't have to make judgement calls. That's a great lesson to teach our kids.

SIGNYM

Thursday, October 15, 2009 3:35 PM

This is the thrashing around of a society in the throes of enforcing dead paradigms. Insanity abounds.

Not sure how this relates specifically to me (or Rue). I don't think I've ever advocated punitive measures. Or zero tolerance.

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Thursday, October 15, 2009 3:47 PM

It's funny- I carried a pocket knife to my small town high school every day, about 40 years ago, without even a second thought. It was a TOOL- I used it to cut rope, tape, cloth, to whittle wooden bits, to cut up my lunch fruit, fix my car. Never even considered stabbing or cutting a person with it. Now I wouldn't last one day before I'd be arrested...

RUE

Thursday, October 15, 2009 4:16 PM

Not sure how it relates to me either, as the only thing I've ever said was that society (that's US, as a group) has the right to make the 'rules' (language, technology, economy, customs, paradigms, laws) by which we all relate. And that ALL societies do that, even the most primitive, even those without laws and law enforcement.

And that it follows that we should be consciously and intelligently selecting the rules we wish to live under (Caral anyone ? ), instead of passing off doing our thinking about those rules with silly slogans like 'survival of the fittest', 'social Darwinism', 'capitalism is freedom' and the like.

"... in fact on that assumption (that humans are evil at root) there is hardly a shred of hope that the race will outlive the Century, given the very large array of WMDs that already exists and which is fast proliferating."

Well, MOST humans (99%) are perfectly fine just getting along, and only wish to live in peace, making their living and being with family and friends.

But then there are the leader-authoritarians who create systems of social, economic and religious power specifically in order to rule. It is they who make the choices that will drive us and the planet into oblivion --- and we, by just going along with the systems they create, will power that demise. Oddly enough, not by being evil, but by being agreeable. By letting THEM create our systems and make our choices, instead of us doing it ourselves - consciously and intelligently would be best.

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

WULFENSTAR

Thursday, October 15, 2009 4:21 PM

Some people can do more damage with a ball-point pen than a Swiss Army knife...

Whats next? Finger paint?

Sheesh...

RIVERLOVE

Thursday, October 15, 2009 4:39 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
Some people can do more damage with a ball-point pen than a Swiss Army knife...

Whats next? Finger paint?

Sheesh...

A few years ago I saw a prison interview with serial killer John Wayne Gacy. You may recall that his crimes were particularly grisly and demonic. Gacy told the interviewer that he could easily kill him and 2 others in the room with just the pencil he was using to take notes. That stopped the interviewer dead in his tracks, and sent a sober chill down all their spines.

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