Zero-tolerance, the school-to-prison-pipeline, charter schools and the war on children
The featured image is of students expelled under zero-tolerance policies engaging in military training as punishment
It was tougher to sponge it all up after I had talked to ‘Frank’ (we will call him Frank due to the sensitive nature of his family’s situation and the chord of fear that runs through ‘public’ Charter schools these days). Frank’s story was about as exacting as trying to wrap ones’ head around the dis-occupation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, especially the not so subtle takeover of the New Orleans public school system by venture capitalists and charter school hucksters. But the sickening patterns were and are the same.
As you will read, Frank’s eleven year old daughter was a victim of the vicious and social Darwinist policies of ‘Zero Tolerance’, as the doublespeak likes to call it.
In the 1990s, as mass school shootings became a reality and a media sensation,zero tolerance policies became a fad, much like torture did under George W. Bush. Unfortunately, zero-tolerance suspensions STAYED popular, owed to the war waged on youth and the low cost of simply turning children over to the US
