Is Zero Tolerance Realistic essays

Is Zero Tolerance Realistic essays A topic of importance that has been in the news recently is whether zero tolerance is needed in schools. Students are able to get expelled for smoking cigarettes to carrying weapons. Many times the crimes that the students are expelled for are not serious enough to warrant the punishment. Other people feel that unless some method of discipline is imposed upon the children they will continue to behave in the exact same manner. I feel that zero tolerance is an extreme method of punishment that is not needed for many of the times that it is used and can cause students not to return to school, commit crimes, and doesnt give them the chance to change. In a recent topic of interest in the news, the Rev. Jesse Jackson was arrested for protesting the expulsion of six high school students for fighting at a football game with the seventh student leaving voluntarily. I think that expulsion in this case is the wrong plan of action because more than one of those seven students will more than likely never return to school. After a student has been out of school for a long period of time it is hard for them to return. They receive no follow-up education because alternative education costs too much. Where does that leave the students? These students have no place to go but to the street. More than 80% of students expelled from school never return and 90% of the inmates in jails and prisons never graduated from high school (Jackson 3). These percentages help prove that zero tolerance is not always the best policy. By removing those children from a controlled environment where they are watched and taught, the school board has now pla ced an uneducated child on the street where his only teachers are criminals. They are left to fend for themselves in a world that is not nice to uneducated people. People, without a degree of some kind, have a difficult time acquiring a decent job that pay ...