We live in a Zero Tolerance Society, page 1

Agreed. I was in grade 7 when all of this "no tolerance" stuff started. Zero tolerance for "bullying/harrassment" was probably the most ridiculous one. At least in my age group, and from what I saw, across the whole school, there were no "bullies" in the traditional sense of people beating kids up for lunch money or anything near that. Just typical kids fooling around and occasionally teasing each other, etc. But thanks to the ridiculous "zero tolerance" policies, sticking your tongue out at another kid was treated like you had punched them in the face.

I've actually written that start of a novel/autobiography (18,000 words so far) of my childhood, with real-life accounts of some of the senseless policies encountered by myself and my friends towards the end of public school. Every time I think back, I can remember even more injustice that would never fly in the "grown up" world. And most of the problems were paradoxically caused by the teachers, which forced the kids into a situation to cause a problem.

Example:
The school admin were constantly talking about not littering, yet they never even placed a single garbage can outside for students during recess. Then once every few months they went nuts and had a "garbage lockdown" where they did bring out a garbage can at the end of recess, just to lecture us on how filthy we've all made the yard, and the rule literally was "You don't get in without a piece of garbage." Every kid had to pick up a piece of garbage before being allowed into the school. So then you have every single kid picking up filth off the ground, and then sent back to class without washing their hands. Christ.

Here's another one...

In grade 8, the teachers got an idea into their head to all take turns passing grades 6-8 all off onto a single teacher to watch, while the rest of them went out for lunch. This resulted in about 4 regular classes of students all being crammed into a single class. So obviously most of us were eating our lunches OFF OF THE FLOOR. I don't know when you were last in a public school, but those floors are so filthy that just sitting on them will cover your pants in dust and dirt. Then at the end of the lunch period they had a similar "cleanup" rule. Rather than every student be responsible for their own garbage, they continued resorting to the "everyone clean up everything" rule, so that the students that made the mess usually continued sitting around while the teacher yelled at the students who already threw out their garbage to help clean up.
So my friends and I showed our teacher the school handbook where a lunch rule clearly stated "All students are to eat lunch in their OWN DESKS in their OWN CLASSROOM with their teacher supervising." Her response to us? "Stop being so petty." My friends and I just started going home for lunch, and the next year they took the rule out of the handbook. Not only do they enforce rules that don't make sense, they pick and choose which rules they want to enforce when the situation suits them.

I can go on and on and on. Ask your kids all the things that are going wrong at their school, they'll tell you.

People working for the public elementary school system (most, not all) are some of the most unqualified people I've ever seen... I wouldn't even call them professionals.

[edit on 10/28/2007 by Yarcofin]