My late ex was fond of saying that, and it appears more and more to be true. It just seems like a week can't go by without some utterly idiotic example appearing in the newspapers of what "zero tolerance" policies have brought us to.
Now I think we all will agree that we don't want kids bringing real weapons to school with the intent to shoot other people. That's a given. But I think adults--and presumably teachers and school administrators are adults, although some cases leave me in doubt at times--need to use their educations and their powers of reason to determine what is and is not a genuine threat to others, and what might be just childish behavior or even real forgetfulness on the part of a student or even a parent, and any punishments, if merited, should be applied accordingly or even not at all. Further discussion below the flourish.
For instance, the case of an honor student who had driven his father's truck to school; dad had left a hunting rifle under the seat and the kid didn't even know it was there, but it was found when a security guard was nosing around the parking lot and spotted it in the locked truck. Kid was suspended for the rest of the year. Another honor student was suspended because he forgot and left his (blunted) sword that he used at an SCA event the previous weekend locked in his car in the parking lot during a football game which occurred after school hours.(These both occurred in Tennessee when I lived there.) I could go on in this vein for quite awhile, but it gets worse. How about the Philadelphia kindergartner who found a gun in his mom's apartment and innocently brought it with him to school as he explained, "to keep it away from his 3-year-old brother"? It wasn't the best choice he could have made, but instead of summarily suspending him, it seems to me that explaining to him why we don't bring guns to school while commending his thoughtfulness towards his brother might have been the better approach. And what kind of message does a school system (Silver Spring, MD) send when they suspend a child for chewing a pop tart into the shape of a gun? (Their excuse was "he'd done it before and been warned." Really? Get a grip!)
The latest ridiculosity, however, occurred in one of those gun-loving states below the Mason-Dixon line, Alabama to be exact, and Mobile County to be specific. It involved a 5-year-old young lady, a crayon, and IMNSHO, some unbelievably stupid adults. It has made the rounds on social media, but I tried to find an account that wasn't too slanted in any direction, so that left out Huffington, Breitbart, and the Mobile media. This seems to be about the least biased account I could find: http://www.al.com/...
First of all, what the hell were these people thinking? She's FIVE YEARS OLD! She's probably just acting out what she's seen on television. Secondly, she can't legally sign anything, besides which, she should not have been asked to do anything of the sort without a parent present. That brings up the question of when was her mother notified. The third question I have, which can't be answered because neither the child nor her mother has been identified, is whether this is a minority child. I rather suspect she may be, since punishments tend to be more harsh for minority children, but since zero tolerance seems to be an equal opportunity offender I guess it doesn't matter.
Let it be known, as I have said before, I am not anti-gun. I am all for reasonable gun safety laws and reasonable school rules, but "zero tolerance" is just absurd. All it does is give school administrators an excuse not to think. Zero tolerance makes no sense and should be done away with!