Zero-Tolerance in schools is a classic example of an idea that appears to be wonderful in theory but which proves to be utterly horrendous in practice. The idea is marvelously simple: No wrong-doing and no fighting will be tolerated. Explanations, however applicable, are deemed entirely irrelevant. So if Opidopo pushes me down several times and I defend myself by punching Opidopo, then I am just as wrong for defending myself by punching Opidopo as Opidopo is for pushing me. Zero-tolerance makes it entirely irrelevant that the only way I was going to get Opidopo to stop pushing me was by punching him.
The above example marvelously points to why zero-tolerance appears wonderful in theory but is horrendous in practice: the policy favors bad students. Here is why.
Precisely what bad students do not care about is getting in trouble. The last thing that deters them is the thought that they will be sent to the principal’s office and given some form of suspension. For that very reason, the policy is not a deterrent to bad students at all. Quite the contrary, zero-tolerance provides bad students with a quite shrewd way of being malicious; for the bad can pick on good students until these good students have no choice but to defend themselves if they (the good students) are to avoid being further harmed.
This, surely, is an unintended consequence of the idea of zero-tolerance. No one had such a thing in mind. Yet, it does not take genius to see that in practice the policy has precisely this effect, which raises the very poignant question: Why do schools continue to insist upon it?
The answer is very troubling: The zero-tolerance policy effectively absolves school officials of any responsibility with regard to having to determine who initiated a wrongdoing and who defended himself or herself against that wrongdoing. Thus, the policy is less about protecting students and more about protecting officials from having to make substantive judgments. No doubt what motivates this stance is the desire to avoid litigation by having to make assessments; and the penchant for litigation is, in turn, no doubt motivated by the warped view that parental love means defending one’s child at all costs.
In any case, it turns out that one horrendous consequence of this zero-tolerance stance is that the innocent suffer. And it is not possible for any remotely thoughtful person to miss this truth. Why? Because the right to self-defense is held to be one of the most fundamental moral and political principles of society. So something has gone terribly wrong when in effect schools are denying students the basic right of self-defense.
Akin to the right of self-defense is non-negligible ignorance regarding a matter. For all my talk about crack and cheerios (which are supposed to lower cholesterol), whilst having fun in the lecture hall with 400 students, the fact of the matter is that (to my knowledge) I have never seen crack first-hand. There is absolutely nothing about my life that would have me encountering crack. Moreover, if profiles are any indication, I am as certain as one can be that none of my friends use the stuff. Yet, none of this prevents someone who dislikes me from claiming that I have crack in my backpack or my computer bag. And if that should ever happen, and my bag was searched and no crack is found, I should hope given the life that I live that there is simply no need to search my home for the stuff.
This brings me to the case of Savana Redding: As a 13-year old honor student she was stripped searched in order to determine whether she had ibuprofen pills. Not crack; but ibuprofen. These are simple pills used to ease pain.
The problem was not that she had acted in any way inappropriate or had done anything that warranted anyone suspecting that she had ibuprofen pills. Rather, it is that one of her classmates who had been found with such pills blamed Redding. The move, I suppose, was to make Redding the person who distributed them. Given Redding’s character, this move would be rather like someone claiming that I had crack in my computer bag.
At any rate, Redding’s backpack was examined and no ibuprofen was found. Rather than stop there, the school proceeded to subject Savana Redding to a strip search. And, of course, no drugs were found. Needless to say, it is subjecting Redding to a strip search that stands as an utterly indefensible and morally obnoxious move. School administrators of the Safford Unified School District in Safford (Arizona) claim they have to be able to protect the entire student body from individuals who may bring drugs or guns to school.
But what this cannot possibly mean is that school officials are entitled to strip search students for any prohibited object given the slightest whim or rumor. Strip searching a student who is rumored to have a gun is one thing. Strip searching a student who is rumored to have basic pain-reliever pills which are prohibited in the school is quite another. In either case, there is the issue of character on the part of each individual: the one making the charge and the one to be stripped searched.
The Supreme Court of the United States is going to review the matter. According to CNN.Com, what is at issue is “whether a campus setting gives school administrators greater discretion to control students suspected of illegal activity than police are allowed in cases involving adults in general public spaces”
But notice the language here: “suspected of illegal activity”. What on earth counts as being suspected of illegal activity? Surely not any wild rumor counts in this regard. So it is even if the Supreme Court rules that schools have greater discretion than do police. For if any wild rumor counts, then this would entail that any student who is angry at another student could have that student subjected to a strip search merely by making a wild claim about the student.
In that case, notice once again that we have a policy that favors students who are inclined to act maliciously.
The officials of the Safford Unified School District would like to make context and character absolutely irrelevant. Alas, there is simply no way to do that and still treat human beings as human beings. Thus, what the Safford Unified School District claiming is that they have the right to be indifferent to the very humanity of their students; and this point gets us back to Ms. Redding.
What made stripping searching her so ludicrous is just the fact that she had been such an upright student and the only basis for even supposing that she—Redding—might have had ibuprofen is that a student who was in fact found with ibuprofen accused Redding of having it. This accusation perhaps made it remotely plausible to search Redding’s backpack. Subjecting Redding to a strip search, however, was simply beyond the pale.
For one thing, there was nothing about Redding’s character that warranted moving beyond her backpack. For another, given that the charge was made spontaneously by a fellow student, the supposition that Redding might have had ibuprofen hidden on her person presupposes a kind of pre-meditation on Savana Redding’s part that has absolutely no basis in reality, given both her character and the context in which the charge was made. Why, it looks for all the world as if the school took more seriously the accusation made by the person who was found in possession of ibuprofen than it did the person, namely Redding, the who had been a model student.
Strip searching a person is an extreme measure; and as such it requires that there be some measure of imminent danger. And the case for that cannot be made with ibuprofen. Accordingly, what the Safford School did amounts to none other than the cruel treatment of a human being. After all, in the absence of imminent danger, the choice was not to strip search Redding or do nothing at all. School officials could have easily chosen to have kept Redding in the principal’s office and called her parents; and a strip search could have been done with the them present.
One of the great ironies of the present direction in American society is that in the name of protecting human beings and, in particular, young children we are resorting to measures that in point of fact undermine rather than affirm the humanity of individuals. Make context and character entirely irrelevant in the learning setting and one automatically makes learning less meaningful than it should be. What is gained in terms of efficiency is lost in terms of the affirmation of humanity.
© Laurence Thomas 2009
