Mamacita says:  It looks so good on paper.  You know, like communism and NCLB.  The problem with all these things is this: they don’t work.

Like an expensive dog with elite genealogy papers and a genetic flaw,  they’ll all eventually bite you in the butt and give you second, and if you’re smart, third and fourth, thoughts about keeping them around.  If you’re smart, you won’t keep anything like that around lest it injure a child or neighbor.

Bottom line: Nice people don’t continue doing things that cause harm to the innocent.

If Zero Tolerance were practiced as it is preached, it would be great.  However, I’ve heard too many ridiculously lame-brained horror stories about chapstick, cough drops, retainer paraffin, Midol, postage stamp glue, inhalers, Scout camping flatware, plastic knives in a lunchbag, glass containers of Gatorade, a pocket knife still in the pocket, hair clips, and EMPTY beer cans on the back seat floor of a parent’s car in a parking lot, for this policy to hold any water with me.

Water?  This policy, utilized as it is, drips Stupid Juice.

I used to scorn many homeschoolers, but now I tip my hat to any family brave enough to withdraw their children from a public school that’s run by Dolores Umbridge and overseen by Cornelius Fudge.

In the words of the almighty Monty Python, “Run away!  Run away!”

Fast.

If  Zero Tolerance truly meant ridding our schools of dangerous, disruptive students, I’d be all for it.  Get those kids out and keep them out.  Period.  Zero Tolerance.

But our administrators seem to be far too busy terrorizing small children with Scout utensils and chapstick to pay much attention to the dangerous kids with other children’s lunch money in their pockets and other children’s blood under their fingernails.

We don’t want to injure their self-esteem or risk a discrimination lawsuit, you know.  These bewildered innocents and their flabbergasted families are a much easier target.

Honestly.  Don’t our school administrators realize that “dangerous, disruptive, and disgusting” have nothing whatsoever to do with ethnicity, race, values, customs, color, self-esteem, or anything at all except upbringing, personal choices, family values, support, and innate mean?

Once a student is of a certain age, all behavior is mostly “personal choice.”   One can blame all those other things only so long before such excusing and rationalizing becomes ridiculous.

Are we or are we not sentient beings?  Then let’s start BEING sentient, because all these unthinking lazy excuse-making societal leeches and exception-mongers are making my soul hurt.  People behave themselves and are kind to each other, or they are not.  Life is full of such choices.  CHOICES.

Bring it on, and don’t anyone DARE bring up the sped issue.  That is most definitely NOT what’s being discussed here.