Zero Tolerance
Categories: Decay of Modern Society, HumorZero Tolerance is something that I think we should have zero tolerance for. That’s because Zero Tolerance treats the world as black & white, without any allowance for mitigating factors. You end up with innocent and/or well-meaning people getting severely penalized for trying to help, like in my recent blog post about Harsh Treatment. Many of the writeups at This Is True tend to highlight these kinds of stories in the news, because they’re so WHACKED!
Related to This Is True is JumboJoke.com, which is written by the same guy and which recently posted Zero Tolerance: Then and Now. It compares life back when I was a kid to life today, with regard to kids and schools and zero tolerance.
Scenario: Jack pulls into school parking lot with rifle in gun rack.
1973: Vice Principal comes over, takes a look at Jack’s rifle, goes to his car and gets his to show Jack.
2007: School goes into lockdown, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.
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Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.
1973: Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best friends. Nobody goes to jail, nobody arrested, nobody expelled.
2007: Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.
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Scenario: Jeffrey won’t sit still in class, disrupts other students.
1973: Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by Principal. Sits still in class.
2007: Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.
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Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his father’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping.
1973: Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007: Billy’s Dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. Billy’s sister is told by state psychologist that she remembers being abused herself and their Dad goes to prison. Billy’s mom has affair with psychologist.
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Scenario: Mark gets a headache and takes some headache medicine to school.
1973: Mark shares headache medicine with Principal out on the smoking dock.
2007: Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations Car searched for drugs and weapons.
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Scenario: Pedro fails high school English.
1973: Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college
2007: Pedro’s cause is taken up by state Democratic party. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro’s English teacher. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he can’t speak English.
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Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.
1973: Ants die. Johnny observes the flying dirt clods and realizes the power of explosives and is more careful from then on.
2007: Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated, Johnny’s Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again. PETA throws “ant blood” on Johnny, and the resulting PTSD causes him to become a serial killer.
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Scenario: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1973: In a short time Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2007: Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison.
[tags]zero tolerance, news, children, foolishness[/tags]
Na
January 27th, 2007 at 10:00
Yeah, but the problem is not zero tolerance, the problem is the lack of it. In the case of the teacher Mary hugging a boy to comfort him, it’s not the idiocy of Mary losing her job, it is the society as a whole that allows someone accusing her in the first place. There should be zero tolerance towards someone who calls the police about a teacher hugging a boy after a fall. But the problem is, no one yanks the phone out of the hands of the individual who spies on the teacher to report her. And this is true for all the scenarios in this post: who calls the police? Who calls the FBI? Why does the neighborhood allow someone to live with them who apparently spies on Billy’s dad and makes the call to the police?
Zero tolerance? Yes sir! There should be zero tolerance towards individuals who are breaking up the social fabric of neighborhoods and communities. There should be zero tolerance to letting incompetent councilors and pathetic judges and greedy lawyers wreck the nation. But there isn’t.
People are too much complaining about the excesses. But these excesses are merely symptoms of a serious disease: a society that refuses to do something about the persons in their midst who accuse teacher Mary, or refuses to storm the prison in which teacher Mary is held, such a society is sick. And why should healthy things happen in a sick society?
Don’t blame the police or the FBI; instead, investigate the motivation of the misguided individuals who call them in for the wrong reasons and in almost all cases you will find that it is tolerance rather than discipline that has shaped their attitude.
It is, of course, not much fun living in a society where individuals are being sent to prison for minor offenses like stealing three apples in a row. But I can’t see how it is worse than living in a society that doesn’t act to prevent one of their own accusing a teacher for comforting a boy who fell while under her care and then blaming the system for sending the teacher to prison.
Robert