“High Expectations” and the Criminalization of America’s Students
By now most of us have seen the video of the resource officer using brute force to yank a female student out of her desk. Appalling, most agree. But this country has been criminalizing students, if not violently, inhumanely and subtly, in their schools for a long time. Why do Americans put up with it?
They have permitted this to happen through arbitrary “no excuses” zero tolerance rules.
Wiki defines zero tolerance as a policy of punishing any infraction of a rule,regardless of accidental mistakes, ignorance, or extenuating circumstances. In schools, common zero-tolerance policies concern possession or use of illicit drugs or weapons. Students, and sometimes staff, parents, and other visitors, who possess a banned item for any reason are always (if the policy is followed) to be punished.
For starters, in 1994, before the sad event at Columbine, zero tolerance was put into place to curb school gun violence and drugs. If you’re a parent you know the mere mention of guns and schools scares you to death. So getting a resource officer for the school sounds like a good bet—an added measure of protection.
In most places, school resource officers are good people who blend in with the school administration. In the middle and high schools where I worked, the resource officers worked closely with the school guidance counselors. As teachers, we knew they were “High Expectations” and the Criminalization of America’s Students: