A policy of "zero tolerance"--a fitting response to young hoodlums toting guns or illegal drugs--has over the last few years become a blanket standard in school districts across the country. Too often, school administrators apply it in ways devoid of reason:

* This year, Jeremy Hix, an honor student and bagpipe player from Holt, Michigan, was kicked out of school for the remainder of his junior year and the first half of his senior year after he wore full Scottish kilt regalia, including the ceremonial knife known as a "sgian dubh," to his junior prom.

* Two days after Jeremy's prom this spring, National Merit Scholar Lindsay Brown, also a trouble-free honor student, was yanked out of her classroom, handcuffed, charged with a felony, and carted off to jail for bringing a "weapon"--a round-pointed table knife--onto school property. The table knife had dropped onto the floor of her car while she was moving her belongings to an apartment near Gulf Coast University, where she was to enroll in an academic scholarship after school ended. Though prosecutors dropped the case against her, she missed graduating with her class and suffered the indignities of time in the slammer.

* A week before Lindsay Brown's misplaced table knife turned up, a fifth-grader was permanently ousted from an Oldsmar, Florida elementary school for drawing pictures of a gun.

* Five-year-old Jordan Locke was suspended from Curtisville Elementary School in Deer Lakes, Pennsylvania for "bringing a weapon to school." His "crime?" He was dressed as a fireman for his class Halloween party, and his costume included a small plastic firefighter's axe.

* A second-grader in Alexandria, Louisiana innocently brought his grandfather's pocket watch to school for "show and tell." But, to his misfortune, the pocket watch had attached to its chain a tiny pocket knife with a one-inch blade. This weapon-toting young "criminal" was suspended and hustled off to an alternative school for a month as punishment.

Overkill of this sort begins with the traumatizing prevalence of real troublemakers in schools. It's fanned by a fear of lawsuits and racial complaints that prevents some administrators from excusing obviously innocent behavior for fear of seeming to play favorites. But these preposterous decisions only further erode Americans' already shaky faith in their public schools.

Tait Trussell is a freelance writer based in Florida.

COPYRIGHT 2001 American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group