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“Zero tolerance” policy on fighting. Any “active” participation resulted in automatic suspension. That part sounds fine, but active participation included things like holding up your hands in self defense or trying to push the person sitting on your chest while punching you in the face off of you.
As my dad said. You’re going to get in trouble either way. You might as well fight back.
I really don’t understand why schools have this rule (at least in many places in the US). Are they trying to teach you to not practice self defense and just let it happen? Doesn’t sound like a great thing to teach.
Looking at it from the other side, it’s actually rare that an innocent kid is beat up without context.
Usually there’s 2 kids that have a beef and have been egging each other on for days. Eventually one kid says something and the other kid snaps and makes the first move but the second kid was just as guilty.
If you only look at “who started it” the second kid gets off scot free, while the first kid gets punished. Not really fair.
"Zero tolerance " attempts to fix this by recognizing that both kids likely played a part.
I was randomly assaulted for no reason all the time when I was in school just because I was short and quiet. I wasn’t instigating shit. I kept to myself as much as possible. Fuck you and your terrible opinion.
You are delusional to the highest degree. Kids in school don’t fight even, it’s one-sided 99% of the time.
The reason for this (and the rule) is bullying. Bullies fight bullied, and everyone gets suspended because “they were fighting”. Since you announced in advance that was the policy, this enables you to conveniently ignore the bullying that has taken place, and instead act as if all bullying-related fights (read: all fights pretty much) are simple fights that do not require any more attention because the issue has been dealth with with punishment.
In turn, this means that a bully who already has a bad rap and generally doesn’t care about grades or standing with school admin because both are already at rock bottom can target any one kid and make their admin standing rock bottom because it will appear as if that kid is fighting all the time and constantly suspended.
There’s no “other side”. The kid who initiated violence is the one in the wrong, even if the other one has been egging him on. “Oh but what if the egging on is one sided and the kid can’t take it anymore?” That is a symptom of your bullying reporting being garbage, not of the natural order of kids. If that kid is taking it out violently it means they’ve tried every other avenue including telling an adult and nothing has changed.
My high school had a rule about the “difficulty” of books you could read. You weren’t supposed to read too high “above your grade”. I assumed this rule was something with the school library and their Accelerated Reader program.
Nope! Tried to give me ISS because I was reading “Screwjack”, which I brought from home. It wasn’t even in class! I was a fucking junior. A high school junior should be able to handle Hunter S. Thompson.
According to them it was “college level” and therefore I shouldn’t be reading it. My father raised absolute hell in that office. Don’t think they tried enforcing that rule again.
They also tried bitching about girls tops until a group of very pissed off redneck fathers had questions about how they were touching the students to measure the width.
I get the fact that reading too high above your grade means you may be way over your head in vocabulary and grammar, but it’s not entirely applicable to everyone. I read Pride and Prejudice and one friend said I sounded posh from the language I accidentally started using. So if a high schooler or junior high schooler can handle it, why not?
If a kid is truly over their head with a book, it won’t be long until they get bored and quit, unless they’re just trying to impress someone and aren’t interested in the book itself.
Kids should be allowed to unlimited learning and curiosity, this spark you have as a child is very powerful if you let it happen and nurture it instead of trying to fit all students in an iron cast thinking that you know what’s best for them.
Also reading a book with words you don’t understand can teach you new words and concepts. So this is basically just a school not letting their students learn.
