Read full article here As a parent of kids in middle school (6th & 8th grade), this zero-tolerance thing is way out of control. Yes, I understand that it was instituted to protect the kids among fears of the Columbine shootings and similar events. However, how far do people think is too far? Thankfully my kids go to a rural school which the biggest problem is smoking and you're seen as an outsider if you smoke pot. I know this because I graduated from the same school and have friends who are teachers there. If stuff such as this started happening within my kids school, I would pull them out and home-school them or send them to private school. I know that the majority of people on these boards are of school age, what is your experience? Admittedly things will be different between the US and the UK and I'm really mostly interested in the US points of view, but hearing from our friends overseas would be interesting too...
From my time at secondary (high) school I remember: No drug searches, no weapon searches in fact no searches of anykind. I went to a pretty rough school the cops didn't even bother coming when one student got beaten up with a chair.
I saw a few searches and seizures, but only when there was good cause. For instance, one time the gangster kid next to me put a handgun on his desk when the teacher was out of the room and threatened to shoot everyone if anyone told (obviously he just wanted attention, why else would he bring it up?). He put it away, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, the teacher came back, and life moved on. I had the same kid for the next class (gym class), but he didn't make it out of the locker room before they had police officers manhandling him and cutting open his locker. They must have found the gun, because I never saw him again. This was all before Columbine, around 1997. I never saw anything that I thought was overdone or bordering on an illegal search and seizure.
Been a while since I was at school, but there was no such thing as searches of any kind, no security people. There was one or two people who would hide round the back of school for a couple of cigarettes, but thats it. And as for the police showing up, I can only remember that happening once, when half the school had a sit down protest cos they had threatened to cancel the Christmas disco. Two cop showed up asked everyone to return to class, then buggered off.
ditto no security searches, no drus searches, no security no nowt the only time i remember a locker search was somones mobile phone kept going off so they seached the lockers to switch it off saying that there were times when the bullying was too much & if i had got a gun or sommat like that i would have gone into that school & done some damage but wepons arent as easy to get over here
That does strike me as waaay too heavy handed an approach to use with kids. I left school a long while ago, but we had a few drug searches. The main one that sticks in my mind was when a kid in my form was dealing coke and the police came to search his locker... couldn't be bothered with the master key and used a crowbar... on MY locker by mistake! It never got fixed properly and I wasn't happy Anyhoo, all they found in his locker was the Baking Soda he was cutting it with. I understand he's now a top level dealer abroad, so it didn't really do much good. Someone brought a home-made gun in once and BB Guns/Air Rifles/Knives were being confiscated ALL the time. Don't remember them being used on anyone though. My school was a bit odd though as we took on anybody that had been expelled. No-one was expelled the entire time I was there, just lots of people died in some very odd ways...
We had a dedicated drug dog for the school when I was in high school. Honestly I think this is all very pathetic. This war on drugs bull**** is getting very tiresome. They have spent inane amounts of money on this "war" and the results show negative progress. More people are using drugs now than before this little campaign. And with the propaganda their putting out now it doesn't suprise me one bit. And the zero tolerance **** for guns is ludicrous. I have read stories where kids have been expelled for having a G.I. Joe plastic gun that is 1.5 inches in length. I suppose the next step will be searches before you enter the school. And we're talking about elementary school kids here. I don't even want to think about what they will do in middle/high schools.
I think the amount of force was excessive, but I do think that schools should have sniffer dogs and metal detection corridors. I also think that a school needs adequate security. When parents bring their children to school you would expect that they dont get mugged in or around the school and cant buy drugs in or around school. We had kids dealing in fireworks at school and somebody told the principal. We had to evacuate the school and the kid got charged with bomb making! BTW-> post 666 # of the devil
Drug searches in school - complete waste of tax payers' money. What do they hope to achieve? The amount of money they can make from charging someone for possession is far less than the amount it would cost to run a mass search like the one described.
Bananas. The world has officially gone mad. What's next? Diabetics aren't allowed to bring insulin to school? What about antibiotics? The man's an idiot!
I think that's the scary part. If it was just the principal who took matters too seriously, that's one thing, but to have a whole committee decide that insanity is the correct course of action just makes me wonder where we're headed.
I agree with all of you, this stuff is totally out of hand. Here in El Paso, Texas (US) where I'm at, there was a big stink in the news a few months back about a 4 year old student who was suspended and his family had charges brought against them because, survey says........... he stuck his tongue out at a girl. now maybe it's just me, but that seems a little out of hand. A 4 year old getting charged with SEXUAL HARRASSMENT because he stuck his tongue out at a little girl.
just to let you know DAD, I emailed our local paper asking for any information they could provide me. when/if I get it, do you want me to email/reply here/post new thread?
I'm a bit fed up about hearing all these ridiculous stories about legal cases in America. While there will be some degree of truth on which the story was started, the press are probably making up a fair amount of it, or more likely - missing out key parts of the story. Can't really trust what you read in a newspapers or web sites.
Humm... I think it would be best to tack it on here as it's all related to the original story. If it was a national paper, I would tend to agree that the facts were probably exagerated, but local papers don't do that. The only thing that I can think of which a paper may do in this situation is not follow up on the "whole" truth. What I mean is maybe this girl had a problem with drugs in the past and the school gave her "one last chance". The news tends to sensationalize stories, not really lie about them. If they lied or made parts up, they can and will be sued for misrepresentation, slander and maybe even defimation of character. Even so, I agree that it's rediculous to expell this child for the entire year because of that.
This is what the EL Paso Times had to say: I'll try and swing by the library after work today, and see if I can get anymore.
$5 for the first and $3 for each after that, plus tax?! The original paper wasn't even worth that much, much less one article . Anyways, as GOO said, "Bananas. The world has officially gone mad. ".
