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Schools Are Overreacting
Take a recent case of "sexual harassment" in a Hagerstown, Maryland, elementary school. Now, sexual harassment is serious business. But what if I told you the suspect in this case was still trying to master the alphabet? Last December a five-year-old boy pinched the behind of a girl in his kindergarten class and was cited for harassment. As the boy's father told a local newspaper, "He knows nothing about sex."But school officials said that the pinch fell under the Maryland Department of Education's definition of sexual harassment and that a tough response would be a learning experience for the child. The incident will stay in the young boy's file for as long as he remains at the school. And he's not even the first to be treated this way: According to Maryland state data, 15 kindergartners were suspended for sexual harassment in the 2005-2006 school year.
Cases like these might be one reason the American Psychological Association says zero tolerance policies are having a harmful effect on our kids. When the APA studied such policies last year, it found that kids actually feel less safe and have lower academic performance in schools with high suspension or expulsion rates (and that's even if you take other factors, like local income levels, into account). The APA also found that suspending students under zero tolerance rules makes it more likely they'll be disruptive in the future.
Educators should have "zero tolerance for the behavior but not zero common sense for the consequences," says Tom Hutton, an attorney for the National School Boards Association.
And one consequence, a Virginia attorney told the American Bar Association's journal, is that "kids are not going to respect teachers and administrators who cannot appreciate the difference between a plastic knife and a switchblade."
The good news is that some parents have been fighting back. Eddie Evans, for one, didn't take what happened to his son lying down. He contacted everyone from the governor to his state legislators. He organized a parents' group, complete with its own website, called Texas Zero Tolerance.
Soon he was testifying at the state capitol to reform Texas's inflexible zero tolerance laws. In 2005 Gov. Rick Perry signed a law that would give special consideration to whether students with weapons had any intent to cause harm or were acting in self-defense. Present at the ceremony: Eddie Evans and his son.
"Get involved in the political process," Evans now urges other parents, "because if you remain silent, the system will not change." His family had the courage and tenacity to say, Enough! Now, how about the rest of us?
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