The Highway.com

As the summer winds down, the stores remind us that another school year is just around the corner. In less than a month our children will return to their studies, a little bit older, a little bit wiser as they take another step toward graduation, the rite of passage into adulthood in the United States of America. If our school system has done its job, the new adults, who enter into our society as full fledged members, will be decent, educated, responsible . . . capable of carrying the mantle we pass, the preservation of the greatest country the world has ever known.

But as summer ends, Zero Tolerance is soon to return.

A generation worried for the safety and protection of our youth has answered the call with a policy that undermines the very essence of our judicial system. So afraid of another Columbine incident, ever mindful of the myriad of dangers our children can be exposed to . . . from drugs to gangs, to the many forms of hatred, violence and abuse. . . we have allowed our schools to become judge, jury and executioner of our children. We stand by silently as they do random searches. We do nothing as their educators expect the worst from them, punish them for a crime they might commit. We applaud them as they expel our children on suspicion alone. The innocent are treated as guilty; one bad apple condemns the bunch.

What exactly does Zero Tolerance teach our kids?

Our kids learn they are guilty.

Our kids learn they have no rights.

Our kids learn they have no voice.

Our kids learn they have no defense.

Our kids learn that the Constitution sounds good but is not worth the paper it is printed on. Our children feel more like prisoners than students, their teachers wardens and guards. Step out of line and they are sent to “the box”. Get noticed one too many times and their education is sent to the gas chamber. Every last one of them is conspiring to start a riot . . . or so we let their educators tell them when they tell a friend they just “bombed the test.” An innocent shove is assault. Idle banter is a thing of the past. They cannot get frustrated or mad. They cannot express themselves with their peers. They cannot protect themselves. Everything is a crisis, and all of the normal outlets of social interaction are stymied in our quest for the perfect “safe” environment. Zero Tolerance strikes all, a weapon of mass destruction, and good decent children, who only seek to grow into mature responsible adults, are left asking: “What did we do wrong?”

Is this the mantle we wish to pass to our future adults?

Is this the lesson they need to learn?

What we teach our children now will carry with them for the rest of their lives. One day they will be the ones deciding the future of our country, and if we teach them that guilt is assumed, not proven in the real world, we have just denied them our entire judicial system. They will never experience the protection we enjoyed and take for granted, and thus will not know or care enough to preserve it.

In my humble opinion, Zero Tolerance is more a problem than a solution. It sends our children the wrong message, and we as the adults need to think of a better way to protect them. We need to stop looking for the bad in everything they do. We need to stop assuming they are all guilty. We need to teach them responsibility, not retribution, that the law is on their side. We need to give them a place to learn, a place to grow and mature, not a sentence to 12 years of "hard time".  We as their parents need to get more involved, stand up for them against a system that will not allow them any defense, that would treat them as criminals to preserve the peace.  Above all, we need to remember that we can’t keep letting our schools tell them all are guilty. . . one day they will believe it. One day they might see guilt everywhere and bring Zero Tolerance to bear to keep us all in line.

After all, they learned it in school.