Zero Tolerance Shows Intelligence

…and other rants

Disclaimer: This essay or rant or whatever you want to call it is in no way to be taken seriously. I do hope you do get something out of this though, whether it is a new person for your hit list or a new reason to commit suicide.

I know you all have waited forever for this, so here it is. This lovely rant is all about the wonderful –cough- stupid –cough- idea behind Zero Tolerance in schools today.

Ok…so if it is such a dumb idea then why do they still have it around you might ask. Well, believe it or not I am about to tell you. The reason we still have it is because of the disability for our parents or school administrators to use a wonderful thing called reason. They think that they should expel anyone who even slightly breaks the rules so everyone will learn. Take for example the kid who was suspended for 5 days for drawing a Confederate flag on some paper during math class. First, I really don’t see how this could constitute anything bad. The only thing I can even remotely come up with is that it could have been considered racist. But if that is the reason then our country is in one sad state of affairs. Drawing a flag is NOT RACISM!! If I were to draw a Nipponese flag, would everyone assume that I was in favor of the Japanese and that I agreed with him or her bombing Pearl Harbor? The whole idea of it is just ludicrous. You cannot place racism on a single flag or symbol. Now people may say…what about the nazi symbol? What about it? I used to draw it all the time in 5^th grade. Does that mean I was anti-Semitic or that I agree with the holocaust. Again it does not…it was just a symbol to me. This to mean is BLATANT restriction of free speech, which I thought was a Constitutional right. Ahh…but that is what they forget to tell kids. Apparently you have NO Constitutional rights when you are in school. You have no rights at all. You cannot stand up for yourself to either teachers or bullies. For if you were to now, they would assume that you would blow up the school or something else equally idiotic. For now if you are bullied or picked on in any way, YOU are considered dangerous. Figure that one out. If you are being the victim, you suddenly become the bad guy. But I digress, for I am getting way off topic.

Back to zero tolerance. They say that if you bring in a nail file that constitutes a weapon and you are expelled. How does that make ANY sense? Read Utopia, for it mentions that if people know a lesser crime carries the same punishment as a bigger crime, and then they might as well do the larger crime. How can people not reason. Nail files are NOT dangerous, nor are key chains. I do not see how zero tolerance actually works. It makes no sense to me at all. The only reason I think people like it, is that it makes the administration not have to do a darn thing. They can sit in their meetings and expel kids without even having to investigate it or ask around about it. They have the ability, with zero tolerance, to “wash their hands” of the situation. They can claim that they were just following “school policy.” That is all bull! Maybe if the administrators, teachers, parents and principals cared about what was going on, they would actually look into these so-called “threats.” Also, if a kid gets expelled for something as dumb as writing “dark poetry” then do you think he will be happy about that? If you are looking for a reason to shoot up a school, they just gave you the perfect one. You are fighting the injustices of the world. If you are messed up enough you could convince yourself you are doing good for the country. A kid just got expelled at IPS this week for SUPPOSEDLY threatening a kid. Now…did they investigate this at all? Did they look into it at all? No, they just expelled the kid without any evidence whatsoever. They did say that this kid had written down his plans to kill people in a leather-bound book. But guess what was in this book…. poetry!! The poor kid was just a poet and they accused him of planning to kill everyone. Oh…and I will give you 1 guess as to what the kid looks like. You know, the grunge/non-conformist look that was picked on a lot. Speaking of non-conformity isn’t it great how it’s literally a crime now. If you aren’t prep, jock, nerd, or whatever you obviously are going to shoot and kill everyone.

So, in conclusion I think that zero tolerance never is and never will be a good idea. If parents start actually raising their kids and if teachers actually started caring about their kids, then we would see less and less of these occurrences of violence in school. So I say write a story about people dying, write poetry about death, and dress however you want. For without stories about people dying we would have no Stephen King or Edgar Allen Poe. And without dark poetry we would have no Emily Dickinson or even Shakespeare. These people never killed anyone and became classic authors. So write whatever you want to, because they can NEVER take that away from you.

This has been another rant by the fun loving criminal ShinKarasu!!