Zero Tolerance: Death of Due Process

Should a student violating the school's dress code (with bare midriff and unbuttoned sweater) be hauled off to jail?

Joanne Jacobs points us to an interesting New York Times article, "Unruly Students facing arrest, not detention." Seems more and more schools are calling the cops as opposed to dealing with students themselves.

In the case of our midriff-baring student, she refused to change or put on another shirt, and was hauled off to the juvenile detention center and booked on a midemeanor charge.

Our view is that violent and offensive disorderly conduct (conduct that wouldn't be permitted on a street corner or in any other public place) needs to have the same response as it would in society at large. We have little or no patience for schools that kowtow to unruly students at the risk of attracting negative attention. It's been our experience that parents of unruly children are far more likely to complain that parents of children whose education is being threatened by the unruly.

But, there needs to be some measure of sanity in all of this!

If we can't deal effectively and appropriately with someone who violates the dress code, instead losing our heads and involving the cops, we are teaching the children a valuable lesson:

"We, the adults of the school, have effectively lost control of you kids."

Children of all ages learn from experience. And their experience with disproportionate "zero tolerance" policies is that the adults are going insane. Why pay attention to what those wacky adults say? They're nuts!

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a ladder of consequences with which to deal with misbehavior? Start small, and work your way up if the misbehavior or rule-breaking continues or escalates. Publish it in a simple guide, and call it the "Due Process Discipline Code." If Johnny does misbehavior X, he will receive consequence Y. If Suzie breaks rule P, she will be facing punishment Q.

The most important aspect of all this is the punishment should fit the crime, and the child should be given opportunity to change his or her behavior. Lastly, the consequences should escalate if the misbehavior does, and the last step should be expulsion.

This may sound harsh, but note we said the last step. Children aren't idiots, and they know on exactly which side their bread is buttered!

The vast majority of students will respect a reasonable discipline code grounded in reality.

Break the dress code? Receive a detention and parent notification (and a warning not to do it again). Do it again and receive a consequence further up the ladder.

The irony is that schools don't want the student body to think that children are in control, but in their abuse of zero-tolerance policies, they broadcast a worse message, that the adults are out of control.

We vote for a sane alternative, the due process ladder. Once students know where their limits are, they will respect them. And the ones that make a career out of disrupting school?

Expel 'em. After due process.