I live fairly close to the junior high featured in this story, in which an eighth grader was arrested after bringing an air gun to school. Schools in this district have a zero-tolerance policy for guns or anything that looks like a gun, and this student ran afoul of this policy. He was arrested for disorderly conduct.
While I certainly understand the fear that has run through our society, especially where children are concerned, is it possible that we've gone too far? We have school buses taking children across the street, because we can't trust that they will cross a street without calamity. Once a year, we have an event where children who bicycle or walk to school get a goodie bag as a reward, which doesn't prevent Mom or Dad from stoking up the gas-guzzler the other 179 days of the school year. We have zero-tolerance policies for T-shirts, toy guns, and who knows what else.
What concerns me is the message that we send by criminalizing stupid behavior. I'm sure the school spends a lot of time propounding the various rules and policies, so it's pretty dumb for a kid to bring anything that resembles a gun to school. On the other hand, kids are stupid, that's a big part of being a kid - it's certainly fair to punish a child for such an offense, but this knee-jerk reaction of arrest, suspension, possible expulsion strikes me as, pardon the expression, overkill.
We could use such an incident as a teaching experience without putting a 13-year-old "into the system," especially because it is unclear the extent to which that helps. Most school shootings have not occurred when the student has pulled a gun out of his locker; they tend to bring weapons to school and use them immediately.
I realize there are legal issues, that school districts hope to avoid lawsuits by showing they did everything possible to forestall violence. And I'm sure more than one educator values this response because it provides the strongest possible lesson.
But I wonder if it's time for some students, somewhere, to do a little consciousness-raising. It might be instructive for every student in a school to bring a toy gun (they would need to quite clearly be toys) to school and see if the school could really advocate arresting and expelling the entire student body. I'm not advocating this - I admit to having somewhat mixed feelings as I balance my concern for security with propriety - but it might serve as an object lesson, and get us discussing where that balance truly should be.
Of course, as long as the "permanent record" is seen as the key to life success, that kind of gesture is unlikely to happen. Still...
While I certainly understand the fear that has run through our society, especially where children are concerned, is it possible that we've gone too far? We have school buses taking children across the street, because we can't trust that they will cross a street without calamity. Once a year, we have an event where children who bicycle or walk to school get a goodie bag as a reward, which doesn't prevent Mom or Dad from stoking up the gas-guzzler the other 179 days of the school year. We have zero-tolerance policies for T-shirts, toy guns, and who knows what else.
What concerns me is the message that we send by criminalizing stupid behavior. I'm sure the school spends a lot of time propounding the various rules and policies, so it's pretty dumb for a kid to bring anything that resembles a gun to school. On the other hand, kids are stupid, that's a big part of being a kid - it's certainly fair to punish a child for such an offense, but this knee-jerk reaction of arrest, suspension, possible expulsion strikes me as, pardon the expression, overkill.
We could use such an incident as a teaching experience without putting a 13-year-old "into the system," especially because it is unclear the extent to which that helps. Most school shootings have not occurred when the student has pulled a gun out of his locker; they tend to bring weapons to school and use them immediately.
I realize there are legal issues, that school districts hope to avoid lawsuits by showing they did everything possible to forestall violence. And I'm sure more than one educator values this response because it provides the strongest possible lesson.
But I wonder if it's time for some students, somewhere, to do a little consciousness-raising. It might be instructive for every student in a school to bring a toy gun (they would need to quite clearly be toys) to school and see if the school could really advocate arresting and expelling the entire student body. I'm not advocating this - I admit to having somewhat mixed feelings as I balance my concern for security with propriety - but it might serve as an object lesson, and get us discussing where that balance truly should be.
Of course, as long as the "permanent record" is seen as the key to life success, that kind of gesture is unlikely to happen. Still...
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