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I disagree; the idea that we can write a complete rule set for humans is something that has tempted humans for a long time, but there's no evidence we can pull it off. How does your rule set handle "Student A sneaks some aspirin into Student B's backpack"? A strict reading says that Student B has some aspirin. Obviously that is not what was meant, but we can't afford to specify all the "obviously"s, and it's probably just plain impossible.

We don't have to have perfect rules, we just have to go from "crazy over-inclusive and treat all violations alike" to "reasonably targeted and allow for severity of the violation".

The basic concept of zero tolerance would handle this fine.

B is a victim. A is a perpetrator. The type of drug sets the punishment. Drugs would normally mean recreational drugs. Aspirin is not recreational, so A doesn't need punishment for carrying this drug. But medical drugs, even aspirin, need cautious use and A should be told about the risks of handing out medication to other people, and about the stupidity of sneaking stuff into other people's bags.

The zero tolerance policy has handled the situation appropriately. A not-zero-tolerance policy would have said "Bah, we've got better things to worry about than that" and not done anything to A.

Unfortunately, what zero tolerance means in most implementations is that B gets no opportunity to explain that they're a victim, and thus B is expelled from that school. And if A is caught they're also expelled.

This is (arguably) the difference between civil law and common law systems — the former seeking to codify correct rules in advance, the latter to adapt rules correctly to new circumstances.

Which is one of the advantages to a jury trial in criminal proceedings, so that a defendant's peers can evaluate the circumstances surrounding the alleged crime. Traditionally judges in the USA have considerable leeway in sentencing as well, though mandatory minimums and "three strikes" laws have eroded that.

In schools, "zero tolerance" rules take away the leeway of administrators to make punishment proportional and humane. Going down the road of making better rules that can be perfectly enforced is exactly the wrong direction.

> If that's not the intent

The cynic in me says that it is the intent. Public schools needed a blunt instrument to simply beat the notion of blind obedience to authority into thick adolescent skulls, and they got it through zero tolerance policies. Now it seems that it's unsustainable, so they'll need another way to subjugate the future generations.

Again, just my cynical side... being the product of zero tolerance policies, myself.

> Public schools needed a blunt instrument to simply beat the notion of blind obedience to authority into thick adolescent skulls, and they got it through zero tolerance policies.

Punishing teenagers for violating drug laws or damaging property is "beating the notion of blind obedience to authority into thick adolescent skulls"??? What do you think is going to happen to them when they turn 18?

> What do you think is going to happen to them when they turn 18?

This is why we have jails.

My high school administrators approached underage drinking like a secret police force.

There were skilled interrogators, effective emotional manipulation, good-cop-bad-cop routines, physical intimidation, etc. There was an administrative employee built like a tank who would be sent to (very publicly) collect suspects from their classrooms for interrogation.

They made plea bargains (which they sometimes didn't honor) for informing on others.

They performed social engineering attacks to increase their signals intelligence capabilities - give us a look at your Facebook account (or just hand over your password), identify these (pseudonymous) Tumblr URLs, etc. and we won't destroy your future by calling your college and having your admission rescinded.

They made deals and adjusted punishments based on whether or not you would identify photographs.

When there were reports of drinking on one of the international class trips (to a country with a low drinking age) they rounded up and interrogated everyone from all of the foreign trips. A good portion of the senior class confessed and was suspended. Because some people ordered wine with dinner in France.

If a party was busted by the village police, they'd brethalyze and ticket every single person, then notify the school - which would kick them out of their current extracurricular activity for the remainder of the season/play.

I turned 18 and went to college. We were taught about responsible drinking - extensive lessons on consent, standard drink sizing, alcohol poisoning, etc. And we were told that administration and the university police are concerned only with safety and noise. RAs know about parties in the dorms (in fact, they have to be registered and neighbors are given a chance to veto if they have a test the next day or something) and do not care. The university police shut down apartment parties for noise complaints but make no inquiries as to the ages or intoxication of the partygoers.

So, to answer your rhetorical question: that. That is going to happen to them when they turn 18. Authority will stop caring about bullshit.

Wow that sounds horrible. Where did you go to school at?

If you just shut up and said nothing, was there anything they could do to you (assuming there isn't photographic/video evidence)?

The local Catholic High School started a program every week they randomly drug/alcohol test a portion of the student population. I was really surprised when no one took a look at the false positive rate. Using reasonable assumptions on high school drug abuse rate along with the false positive rate used for similar tests, I discovered that significantly more people who test positive will have never used the drug.

Suburban upper-middle-class district in the Midwest.

Most everyone went into the office planning on shutting up and saying nothing; only a few actually managed to do that. But no, absent other evidence, they only punished those who confessed.

When they turn 18 they will be allowed to choose where they spend their time and what they do with it and who they spend it with, which is likely to reduce both the need to self-medicate and the chance of getting caught doing so.

Once when I was riding passenger with a friend, a cop pulled him over and told him that he was getting a ticket as part of their new "zero tolerance" policy: anyone caught exceeding the posted limit by more than 10 mph was going to be ticketed. I sometimes wonder if cops say stupid things just to identify the smart asses out there (I kept my mouth shut).

Why is that a stupid thing to say?

Before the zero tolerance policy cops had discretion whether to ticket or not. After the policy they must issue a ticket to anyone going X over the limit.

Zero tolerance would be 65.0001 in a 65 zone means ticket, but the humorous psuedo-zero tolerance is +10 so 74.9999, although nearly 15% out of tolerance, is OK

Throw on some error bars to your speedometer and whatever it is the cop is using to track your speed (not a radar gun unless they are state police, in some states), and 10mph over is probably reasonably close to the lowest amount they can nail people for without significant false positives.

The philosophical point of "zero tolerance" is error bars and "reasonable" don't exist.

Consider a draconian zero-tolerance drug policy in an office place, where they can demand a piss test at will.

Does "zero tolerance" imply that they will disregard all standard laboratory procedures, disregard the margin of error on the tests, and fire you even if the lab tech points out that the test technically returned a negative since the result was below the margin of error? No, "zero tolerance" isn't, literally interpreted, a statement about how the test will be executed. It is a statement about what happens after the test returns a positive.

Of course in practice "zero tolerance" means "we are going to do whatever the hell we want, and then wash our hands of responsibility". That is how "zero tolerance for guns" can turn into "nail this kid to the wall for eating a poptart".

Because it's a "zero tolerance" after "10 mph tolerance" policy.

Yes. Again, why is that stupid?

Before the policy cops would have had discretion for people travelling at any speed. After the zero tolerance policy they now have zero tolerance for people travelling over 10 mph over the limit.

You're sort of right. If he'd said "we have zero tolerance for anyone going over 10 mph," it certainly wouldn't have been as funny. Instead, he proclaimed proudly that "we have a zero tolerance policy" and then explained it only applied to people going 10+ mph over the limit in the next sentence.

There's a difference between using the phrase "zero tolerance" to describe what happens in a certain situation and using the phrase "zero tolerance" to describe your policy when it has tolerance built into it.

(I un-downvoted your first post)

So now the limit is effectively 10mph faster than what is actually posted.

No, the limit is what is actually posted. If you drive between what is posted and what is posted + ten you might get a ticket - it's up to the cop.

If you drive over what is posted + ten you will get a ticket. In the past it was up to the cop.

New policy: All crime is now illegal.

> Because it's a "zero tolerance" after "10 mph tolerance" policy.

And....

The US has a zero tolerance alcohol policy over 0.08 after a 0.08 tolerance policy.

If that's your entire point its not a very compelling one.

And is that policy billed as a "zero tolerance for drinking and driving policy" or a "zero tolerance for drunk driving" policy?

There is a law against drunk driving that mentions a 0.08 threshold. There is a law against speeding that doesn't mention 10mph leeway.

My personal experience is no exceptions to the rules means massive petty corruption. He's a mostly good white kid; don't look at the contents of his "cigarette" too closely. I'm not going to look in your backpack because I don't particularly want to have to have you arrested, but god help you if I ever have to talk to you again about smelling beer on your breath...

This is usually the hidden story behind draconian enforcement. The kid didn't get busted for having a tablet of tylenol, she got busted using tylenol as a weapon for disrespecting a teacher, being the wrong race (not necessarily black, in some schools white is the wrong race), etc. The real purpose is if everyone is inherently a criminal all the time, then everyone can be punished as much as any tin pot dictator desires at any time. That's the true purpose of the rule. Or the true educational lesson for the kids.

Of course it's hard to tell if allowing arbitrary exceptions also allows the same kind of problem. "I'll give you a warning because [you're white and] you're normally a good kid and one mistake shouldn't ruin your education"

Yeah. I landed on the privileged end of this. I think my white privilege saved my ass in highschool.

Being the sort of "exceptional" kid that people like @will_brown talks about helping saved my ass on numerous occasions. In the post-Columbine crackdowns in schools, I use to come and leave highschool as I pleased. The administration was terrified of doing anything to 'gifted' kids because a few years earlier the parents of a gifted kid got a lawyer and apparently gave them quite a scare. I probably spend less than 25% of my senior year actually in the classes I was suppose to be in, spending the rest of the time either playing quake under the pretense of "gifted seminar", or knocking around town under the pretense of taking college classes. Had I been a 'regular' kid, I would have surely been expelled.

Getting declared "gifted" can give you massive amounts of privilege.

> Of course it's hard to tell if allowing arbitrary exceptions also allows the same kind of problem.

As illustrated above, there are always arbitrary exceptions, because the people can informally let kids off the hook. The problem is that the punishments are so high. Why can't zero tolerance use less drastic punishments?

"Why can't zero tolerance use less drastic punishments?"

You seem not to have read my post. The reason it exists is to allow the arbitrary destruction of kids lives, preferentially as a weapon against minorities, undesirables, the poor, often all of the above. You're treating the primary purpose of that feature as if its a bug. Like asking why the "rm" command takes the drastic effect of deleting files.

For example, one reason why it might exist is so if a teacher gets called a bitch, the cops would laugh at a teacher who tried to report that as assault, but if the teacher can label a girl as a drug dealer and get her expelled and prevent her from graduating or getting on the middle class treadmill in general, because of the girl's monthly cycle and some advil in her purse, well, we'll see who's the dominant primate and who gets the last laugh in that argument. Its NOT a bug its an intentionally inhumane feature, correctly implemented.

Its possible to do a really efficient and effective job of being evil. I don't really know how to rephrase it more clearly? Its like the anti-google motto or something?

I agree. The general mechanism is to push "control" of the situation and the punishment outside of the actual agents who are enacting punishment: under "zero-tolerance", it is no longer the arbitrary agency of the teachers and administration, but laws that "force" them to take these actions.

In situations where there is no "zero tolerance", there are still arbitrary and gross executions of power, but the agency behind this power can at least be (more) clearly traced to the actors behind it.

In many ways, teachers are people who never grew up past high school. They can't wait to go back and do it all again, but as the ultimate popular kid.

> You seem not to have read my post. The reason it exists is to allow the arbitrary destruction of kids lives, preferentially as a weapon against minorities, undesirables, the poor, often all of the above. You're treating the primary purpose of that feature as if its a bug.

I didn't respond to your post. But you are wrong about the reason "it" exists. The school administrators that create the zero tolerance policies are usually not the same people that are on the ground enforcing the policies. It might be used as a weapon by the teachers on the ground, but they aren't the ones creating the policies.

The problem with the education system is similar to that of a corporation, or politics. Nobody who sees the need for changes has the authority to make those changes, and those in authority do the bare minimum needed to keep their jobs.

I was expelled or "asked to leave" from several high schools (in Broward County) when I was growing up about 12 years ago. Ironically, it was never for drugs or misbehavior, but instead for being too smart for my own good. The offenses were always minor: a "dangerous" amount of "knowledge of school computer systems". Pushing a chair across the room "in a violent manner" (fast enough to make it clang into the wall). Strange electronics diagrams that they could not decipher (an FM transmitter project kit from RadioShack). Having a website with links to VisualBasic AOL proggies and punters that "could be slowing down the Mac network".

What it took me years to figure out was that nobody wanted to deal with a special case. Nobody wanted to take the time to help you or understand you. They have thousands of kids to deal with. They're happy as long as everyone is towing the line and they'd much rather get rid of you (or pass you) than educate you. And I can sum up the motivation in one sentence:

There is zero incentive for educators to help troubled kids.

"There is zero incentive for educators to help troubled kids."

Brevity is overrated; none the less strike out "troubled".

Not so fast. There are incentives for teachers to help talented, excelling individuals who have no problems. It makes the teacher and the school look good, especially for local and national government programs that reward teachers/schools with good results. You could say this is much more relevant in universities where millions of dollars may hinge on the ability of a student to develop something the school can shop around.

Actually, there is one incentive for teachers to help troubled kids: High school and college sports. The sports brings in the money, and so they need to make sure the kids don't completely fail out so they can keep bringing in the dough. Other than that, though...

> There are incentives for teachers to help talented, excelling individuals who have no problems. It makes the teacher and the school look good, especially for local and national government programs that reward teachers/schools with good results.

The incentives are actually reversed in the era of NCLB, where the most important measure isn't how good the best results are, but what proportion aren't meeting the minimum standards for their grade level. This provides incentives to: 1) Improve the performance of the worst performing students if it is cheap to do, 2) Get the worst performing students out of the system if it is not cheap to improve their performance, 3) Avoid accelerated promotion of students that are performing at a higher grade level and not challenged, so as to make the percentages look better.

> Actually, there is one incentive for teachers to help troubled kids: High school and college sports. The sports brings in the money, and so they need to make sure the kids don't completely fail out so they can keep bringing in the dough.

As I understand it, for the most part, high school and college sports bring in money (if at all) for the sports program, not the school at large.

> Nobody wanted to take the time to help you or understand you

On behalf of several ex-teacher friends, a minor correction -- there are teachers who care, and go out of their way to help the special cases; but the system treats them just as badly as it treats the special kids themselves, so they tend not to stay in that career for very long.

But then that's even worse.

Nice recent interview on NPR with their sports reporter Mike Pesca and a former teacher of his:

"Remembering when a teacher had his back"

http://www.npr.org/2013/11/24/246984890/remembering-when-a-t...

"I always thought — I never questioned it — I always thought you had my back," Pesca tells Sheehan.

"Back then, I would say that school was enjoyment for you, and maybe not necessarily the classes," Sheehan recalls, laughing. "For a lot of teachers you were problematic, so part of my job was really to keep you from being thrown out of that school. That passion is kind of what drove you in school."

It was the same passion that drove Pesca to push the boundaries, he says. Sheehan remembers a problem-solving program in nearby Katonah, in which gifted students were given a problem to solve and then present in a skit. Pesca's skit: "The Top 10 Things We Hate About Katonah" — a sort of David Letterman-esque spoof.

"The guy running that program practically wanted to have you arrested," Sheehan says. "That night, I did have your back."

Yes I wondered as a dyslexic how I woudl have fared in today's schools. I was in the small group who had reading ages well above the norm who where allowed to read by our selves in a corner.

These days certainly in the UK all the effort is put into the borderline kids to get them from a D to a C as the number of C GCSE's is a key metric

People may be interested in the UK documentaries "Educating Essex" and Educating Yorkshire".

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/educating-essex/4od

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/educating-yorkshire/4od

I was fortunate in that, when I was recognized as a special case in elementary school (in Broward County), my parents were well-enough known at the school that I was able to get special arrangements. It was also 1988 and thus before public education administration really started going south. I also was not the type to push rules, which no doubt made things easier as well.

Still, as an "exception" I got lumped into the ESE bucket with every other kid, regardless of reason, that did not fit the mainstream path.

s/troubled//

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board." — Mark Twain