God damn. Shut up already. Woe is me, every one is attacking me.
I have neither given you warrant to attack me (other than my opinion differs) nor provoked you into attack. I've kept it civil. I'd appreciate it if you do the same.
While I know a lot of people on OT seems to value pointless "zingers" as some form of support to "winning the argument," it doesn't actually do anything to promote discussion of the topic. To some, their entire existance is defined by being a complete jerk to whoever they are replying to. They lead sad and pathetic lives.
While normally I'm an eye for an eye poster (take shots at me, I'll wing them back), I'm trying to avoid doing that going forward as it just sends entire threads into a death spiral of worthlessness.
If you can't handle a discussion without resorting to attacks and insults, then don't reply. It doesn't add anything to the conversation and derails an otherwise worthwhile discussion. I believe my opinions to be right (as everyone believes theirs to be), but I'm open to them being wrong, or at very least seeing it from another perspective. Just jumping in and being a complete jerk just because you disagree doesn't provide any logic or reasoning behind your opinion and just makes you look like you can't come up with anything.
I know what the word means. Perhaps you don't, I don't know.
No, you don't know what it means. Sorry, but it's true. You are trying to shock and exaggerate using common and necessary items at schools, while I'm using items that aren't common or necessary.
That's not my argument... that they're not necessary. In some cases they are... you know for eating stuff?
Like what? I went through 8-ish years of taking my lunch to school and there wasn't a single instance where it was needed. What exactly has to be in a lunch that
REQUIRES a knife? Everything that would require a knife can, and should, be taken care of in the packing of the lunch.
My point was, was that you can take practically anything to assault and harm someone. Hell, you could a water bottle of all things and inflict some major damage, but would it make any sense to ban those? Absolutely not.
My point is there is a line with blurry edges. Some things are less blurry than others. Knives are much less of a blurry line than a water bottle. There are things that can be used as weapons, but they are required for school like pens and pencils. Some things can't be helped, but knives can.
Good for you. Want a cookie? Doesn't make your argument any less wrong. Besides you practically negate your whole argument by your second point there... it goes in complete contradiction of zero tolerance policies. If you want to enforce zero tolerance, you better damn well cover EVERYTHING, otherwise parents will just bitch and complain when their kid gets hurt by something else. Which is why zero tolerance policies don't work. It's been said time and time again, school administrators need to exercise judgement with some of these issues, and not just throw a blanket over the issue and say "ZERO TOLERANCE!" It's irresponsible, and the world simply doesn't work like that after school (unless you live in California and three strikes, but that's another argument for another day).
How does my second point negate my entire argument? The only way it could is if there was a single zero tolerance policy to encompass all things that could possibly happen in school. There isn't. The zero tolerance policies always target one specific area (drugs, weapons, violence), and there is always a way to appeal them.
Zero tolerance isn't meant to be applied to every policy in every situation. There won't/shouldn't be zero tolerance dress policies or zero tolerance language policies. Protecting the schoolchildren from potential harm is rather important and come up quite a bit as of late, and having zero tolerance rules have their place when used appropriately.
As I've stated before, the policy of no cellphones, which started this discussion, is not really one that's all that important and I doubt he'll get suspended for using his phone once (zero tolerance policy stipulation). However, had the kid been caught using it over and over with the teacher pic being the final straw, it's a different story where suspension might be more warranted for repeated rules violation. We do not know how many times he was busted with it, we don't even know if it was a zero tolerance policy.
Seriously? You're gonna go with that? Name the uses for a gun besides bludgeoning and shooting living things. There are none. Name the uses for a simple pocket knife.
Name one thing in school where a simple pocket knife is
necessary. It's not the 1001 uses of a pocket knife that's the problem. It's the fact that it's not necesary at school and can be dangerous (to yourself and others), with the school held liable.
I too, had a pocket knife. I took it to school a number of times for no real reason. I even recall my 4th grade teacher asking to borrow it (maybe she was just taking it away for the day, now that I think about it...). I never got in trouble for it, though.
9/10, the knife won't be used as a weapon. The issue arises the 1/10 it is, and by the fact that it's completely unnecessary to have a pocket knife in school, it's banned. Just because
Now I'm not saying that schools should be a free-for-all where kids can take anything they want, dress how they want, and do what they want. Yea, life works like that. There will always be the next thing that can harm someone, but we don't need to exist in a society of padded walls just because we're afraid hurting someone.
Yes, there will always be "the next thing." There always has, always will be. However, you are looking at it from a very, very large extreme that doesn't even come close to encompassing my viewpoint.
You are acting as if everything is under zero tolerance with suspension being the punishment, which just isn't true. First off, zero tolerance doesn't mean "Break the rules once, get suspended" - it means "Break the rules once, suffer the consequences" where the consequences could be as little as getting the item taken away, or as extreme as expulsion. It's perfectly fine to have zero tolerance, especially in instances like weapons, violence, etc as long as there is
an appeals system to allow for extenuating circumstances that will inevitably arise.
When I was a kid, there was a zero tolerance policy against those slap bracelets (first time they became popular). Teacher saw you with one, it was hers. No questions asked. I didn't like it at the time, but those things sure were a distraction. After only a few days, you never saw them in school again.