With regard to the original post, its zero tolerance policies that are enacted at a local level. This means zero fun and zero flexibility. They think that suspensions and punishments for small infractions of any reference, pretend play, or jokes about some topic they don't want kids to learn about (guns, smoking, etc.) will help stop kids from growing up in a culture of violence, drugs, etc. and stop them from thinking about those topics. Instead it doesn't stop it and the kids get screwed over from missing school and possibly having their confidence stunted.
In short, its kind of like the same logic as the drug war, trying to give more punishment for minor rule breaking to stop whatever they want to stop. Its had similar results as well. (Obviously not trying to compare the two directly, as the drug war is far more serious and large scale, just an analogy)
I don't know much of anything about the U.S education system, but I suspect there is a lot of truth here. 'Zero tolerance' is a policy Americans use in much more than just the education system.
I don't know what it is about Americans, but it seems that collectively you guys can't use judgement and discretion but must go to extremes.
This isn't going to help my cause, but, as a long suffering listener of the ridiculous late night radio program Coast to Coast, of which Alex Jones is a regular guest, there are two things I agree with him about:
1.Some of his comments on the Bilderburg meetings. I don't agree with him that all sorts of conspiratorial things go on there, but I agree with him that when elite business leaders are getting special access to elected leaders that the public has a right to know who are attending these meetings.
I know Alex Jones got into a heated conversation with David Gergen over this at the Bilderberg meeting (or maybe it was Bohemian Grove) and somehow Alex Jones stayed sane and didn't go overboard and merely asked over and over again something like "all I want to know is who are our elected leaders meeting with." And Gergen gave the most haughty response of something like "I find your comments to be very disprespecting."
I can understand why so many Democrats in the Clinton Administration really didn't like David Gergen after he was brought into their Administration.
2.Germane to this discussion though, Alex Jones also said something like "Where did this zero tolerance stuff come from? What ever happened to human beings using their God-given intelligence to use their discretion and make judgments based on the specifics of the situation?"
I was very surprised when I heard Alex Jones say that. It's possible that to some degree zero tolerance is a bureaucratic necessity in the need to treat everybody equally, but here in Canada we have similar bureaucratic requirements and I don't think we follow 'zero tolerance' to anywhere near the same degree.
