How much should we tolerate?

Poor Elijah’s cousin counseled her 10-year-old not to vault over the couch. This was immediately before he vaulted over the couch.

“Steven,” she reminded him as he contentedly strolled from the room, “you know we don’t tolerate that behavior.”

His cousin hasn’t been tolerating Steven’s behavior for years. Poor Elijah first noticed this the Thanksgiving Steven got away with throwing sweet potatoes at his parents. Ten minutes later, Steven reappeared with a soccer ball. His mother reminded him about the “no soccer ball” rule. The ensuing soccer kick narrowly missed Poor Elijah’s head.

“Don’t worry,” his cousin reassured him. “We don’t tolerate that behavior either.”

Zero tolerance is a problem at school, too. Many schools are just as confused about what it means and just as unable to enforce behavior standards.

For some, zero tolerance simply means strict, as in the 1958 expression, “Miss Schauwecker is really strict.” Today we’d say Miss Schauwecker practiced zero tolerance. She didn’t put up with misbehavior, and everybody knew it.

Zero tolerance more specifically means that certain actions are without exception unacceptable, and that no mitigating circumstances will excuse those actions or cancel the consequences. The term dates back to a 1994 federal law which required schools to expel students who brought firearms to school.

With nearly everybody bemoaning the sad state of school discipline, a firm, consistent response to misbehavior should be popular. But both versions of zero tolerance have always had critics.

Some maintain that school officials, like judges, need to be free to exercise discretion when they’re meting out penalties, even in extreme cases. They have a point. The purpose of any legal system, from the Supreme Court to the principal’s office, is to interpret and apply general laws in specific circumstances.

For example, it’s illegal to drive too fast, but no court fines a fire truck for speeding to a fire. In the same way, running in the hall is against the rules, but no school issues a detention if you’re running for the nurse because your friend got hurt. Provocation, motive, and the gravity of the act need to factor into any judge’s decision.

Critics also complain about extreme and inappropriate responses. Zero tolerance is why, shortly after Sept. 11, police arrested a man who’d forgotten his camera for running backward down an airport escalator. It’s why officials suspended a firstgrader for “sexual harassment” when he kissed a classmate on the cheek. It’s why a student was suspended when she shared her Midol with a friend. It’s why a Boy Scout knife in your pocket can land you in front of the school board.

We’re afraid, afraid of sexual assaults, afraid of drugs, afraid of gun violence and afraid of lawsuits. And we’ve got good reason, despite an ACLU official’s straight-faced declaration that schools’ fears of being sued are “overblown.” He doubtless made this comment in between filing lawsuits.

It’s reasonable to argue that schools need flexibility to exercise judicial discretion based on the specifics of the offense. But critics commonly ignore the conditions that prompt schools to overreact.

One such critic asserts that if schools would “stop excessive penalizing” and “discontinue zero tolerance” policies, “fewer students would be pushed out of schools” and “more students would receive the education they depend on public schools to provide.” He urges administrators and teachers to employ “empathy” instead of “authority” and “start communicating with students to understand their motivations.”

Yes, sometimes conversations can defuse classroom disruption, and some classroom offenders deal with unspeakable burdens. Except what about the rest of the students who don’t receive the education they depend on when disruptive classmates aren’t removed from their classrooms? What about empathy for them?

Some experts bizarrely claim that zero tolerance is “inherently unfair” because “it treats all children the same.” They compare offenders who disrupt class and hurt other students to students who have trouble with math. Students who can’t figure out long division get extra help. Therefore, these advocates argue, students who can’t behave shouldn’t be held to the same behavior standard. One expert equates “zero tolerance” with “intolerance” and asks if that’s “what we’re trying to teach our children.”

I hope my students learn a respectful tolerance toward other races and religions. But I don’t expect them to tolerate injury, abuse or chronic disruption. I don’t expect them to tolerate having their education stolen from them.

Yes, we need flexibility and common sense. It’s illegal, and dangerous for students to dispense drugs. But lending your friend two contraband aspirin isn’t the same as selling heroin out of your locker. Any discipline policy that doesn’t recognize that difference is flawed, no matter what you call it.

On the other hand, it’s a dereliction to tolerate repeated misconduct in the name of “flexibility” and “best practice.”

If a student disrupts learning, torments another student, uses drugs or brings a gun to school, it’s wrong to impose him on his classmates based on his academic standing, the touchdowns he’s scored, his home life or his ethnicity. It’s altogether insane to serially reimpose him specifically because he’s made a career of disruption, torment, defiance and violence.

That tolerance policy is more criminal than the crimes themselves. We need to be intolerant of students’ bad behavior unless we want our children to live with it each day.