Zero Tolerance, The Evils of

Zero tolerance is a policy concerning issues in today's society that are thought to be extremely dangerous. The three main focuses of the policy are incidences of violence, drugs, and alcohol. Zero tolerance treats children as if they were adults, and removes the "innocent until proven guilty" philosophy on which our country thrives. This policy could be extremely harmful to the lives of the students it affects and, "[...] disrupts the lives and educations of good students nearly as often as it does those of troubled students." This hap

Children are different from adults, and should be treated as such. If a child makes a mistake and receives proper guidance, and when necessary, punishment, he or she is likely to recover from it. If a fully grown adult is discussing a terrorist activity, or draws a picture about it, one can have a much better chance of assuming they have potentially harmful intents about it. However, when a five-year-old draws a picture about what happened at the World Trade Center, he or she is most likely not planning any actions of mass-destruction, but merely expressing their grief in the only way they can feel and share it (Ayers and Dohrn 1).

In 1998, over three-million students were suspended from school in the U.S. alone. Thousands more were expelled. The vast majority of these punishments were for minor offenses - the inevitable result of children acting like children. The emotional and educational fallout from those punishments, however, reach much farther, sometimes into adulthood (Starr 4).

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