I remain very skeptical of "zero tolerance" policies in school. For example, CNN has more about this 14 year old student in Atlanta who was expelled for writing a journal entry in which a fictional student dreams of killing a teacher.
Rachel Boim will no longer be attending Roswell High School, in a suburb north of Atlanta, because it would be too much for her to cope with, David Boim said.
The father did not say where Rachel will attend, saying his daughter needs to put this situation behind her and "just be a 14-year-old girl" and "live the life of a regular 14-year-old," Boim said.
Susan Hale, Fulton County Schools spokeswoman, said the school administration wishes her well and "wants what's best for the student" so she can have a fresh start.
Now, it should be noted that she was expelled under the school's "zero tolerance" policy. According to her parents, after a teacher confiscated the girl's journal (as she showed the journal to a friend), the girl was removed from class by an armed guard (not exactly a subtle tactic). Once she was expelled, the resulting media attention has been, in her father's words, "surreal." The girl says she was simply writing a work of fiction and did not intend to make a threat.
I remember quite vividly kids in school who would draw pictures of various teachers and show them being killed, maimed, or otherwise hurt. Riddled with arrows, eaten by animals, run over by a car, etc. Such images were, by and large, just an expression of the mixture of boredom and frustration so frequently exhibited by school age kids. There wasn't any real harm intended by them. Yet I assume that any such pictures would likewise get those kids expelled today. My son's little comic book portrayals of characters fighting and hurting each other are also probably beyond the pale.
I recognize that there isn't an issue of this girl being prosecuted for any crime, as there was in the Oklahoma case involving a high school student who wrote a "plan of attack" for a school assault. But I remain bothered by these policies, which I think do a few things, none of which I feel are particularly worthwhile:
1. They eliminate any need for teachers or school administrators to teach students. For example, here the reaction was to immediately boot the girl out of the class, and then out of the school. The response was not to discuss the matter with the student quietly; the school system's response was essentially to wash their hands of the student. The reason for such a policy is driven solely by fears of school liability, rather than any concern for the students: in other words, the administrators don't want to be blamed later for overlooking a potential "problem." Better to just toss all the problems out the window at the first sign of trouble. They don't have to utilize common sense or actually consider the facts of a particular case; rather, whatever the offense, school officials simply say "Off with their heads!"
Article comments
1 - jadester
aye, man. There is a *WORLD* of difference between drawing something and doing it. Anyone crazy enough to kill probably won't bother with a very good drawing anyways
2 - e
although i agree that zero-tolerance is stupid, i go to roswell high school and must state that you have the case wrong. her teacher took the diary home and read it there, rachel was not removed from class by a guard after it was confiscated. and it wasn't an armed guard. we usually have one armed COP on school property and it, more than likely, was him.
3 - TDavid
The Columbine kids were into Doom and designed Doom levels. I used to have one of the old wad files from one of the levels they designed. I'm sure it can be found out there still.
I think if it was outlined about what types of things cannot be written about or discussed as "fictional" work in school then a zero tolerance is acceptable under these circumstances.
But has any female student gone gun-psycho in school? I know there have been cases of males, but I don't know of any females. Anybody?
If history has taught us anything, one can just never know.