One Spring morning in 2002 Adrianne innocently went to school with a Tweety bird chain around her neck. She was eager to show her friends her new prized possession. Little did she or her parents know that wearing this would lead to such trouble. The school deemed the chain as contraband and by the end of the day, the little girl had been suspended for 2 weeks. Educators cited the Zero Tolerance Policy to blame; the school had no choice but to activate the suspension.(Wald). Has the system gone too far? The current extremes in which the Zero Tolerance Policy is carried out takes the human factor out of child discipline and replaces it with discipline that falsely calms society but neglects the child.
             All over America, school systems have adopted a "Zero Tolerance" policy for discipline. According to Johanna Wald, "At its most extreme, zero tolerance has resulted in an 11-year-old being hauled off in a police van for packing a plastic knife in her lunchbox to cut chicken and a 6-year-old cited for "sexual harassment" for running out of the bath naked in his own home to tell the bus driver to wait for him."
             Educators have adopted an "all or nothing" attitude for discipline in the public school system. The Zero Tolerance policy equates to having the same disciplinary action for every offense of a particular type. It equates a childish infraction with a major criminal offense. According to Judith Browne in a Washington Times article, "the educational system is starting to look more like the criminal justice system. Acts once handled by a principal or a parent are now being handled by prosecutors and the police" (Kjos). Where do we draw the line in deciding what to send to the principals' office or to the police station? Too many examples show that we don't make that distinction very well. In New Jersey, two elementary school boys were arrested and charged with terrorism for playing cops and robbers with paper guns (Kjos). Making mat...