22 April 2003

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Why zero tolerance rules in our schools are just plain stupid. I have had more than one client call me when they found out their kid (let's be honest here and say son; these rules are meant to repress male behavior) had transgressed in some minor way. Thankfully, I have found that local principals use common sense in these matters and ignore the required expulsion when kids do something like leaving a butterknife in the bed of their truck after a weekend spent moving things from one apartment to another. They ignore the rule.

This fad will pass someday and common sense will rule once again. It strikes me much as the last anti-male fad when schools were trying to make all the male kids sit down and be quiet by diagnosing them all with ADHD and doping them up. It got so bad that the family doctor felt that he had to warn my parents not to let school officials put my (much) younger brother on ritalin when he entered the first grade. I think that parents and doctors have reacted enough to that fad so we don't see the problem as much anymore.

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