May
15, 2002 8:45 a.m. Zero
Sense
A
dangerous trend.
aybe you missed the
latest "zero tolerance" horror story. It seems that seven fourth-grade
boys were suspended from school for pointing their fingers like guns during
a game of "army-and-aliens" on the playground. What's worse,
the school brought these boys in for questioning to see if their parents
owned guns-as if that should matter. This scary little instance of bullying
(bullying by school administrators, that is) was reported in a long and
thoughtful article
on zero-tolerance policies in Monday's Washington Times. The story
was then picked up by the usual conservative suspects, at NRO's Corner,
and at James Taranto's "Best of the Web." Yet eye-opening as
the Washington Times article may have been about the downside of
zero tolerance, the problem is likely to be ignored by the powers that
rule America's school system. Why?
According
to the Washington Times, "school officials defend zero tolerance
as an unfortunate but necessary reaction to increased demands for school
safety." But what if those demands are based upon an illusion? What
if the dangerous trends that make parents tolerate the abuses inherent
in zero-tolerance policies are nonexistent? What if school shootings are
not on the rise? What if the bullying that supposedly contributes to these
shootings is not pervasive? What if, in short, our zero-tolerance policies
are based upon myth?
That is precisely
the upshot of "Monster
Hype," an important article just published in Education
Next by University of Delaware professor of sociology and criminal
justice, Joel Best. (Education Next, by the way, is a great journal
for those interested in elementary and secondary education. It's senior
editor is Chester Finn, who served in President Reagan's Department of
Education and has since become one of the nation's premiere experts on
education policy.)
What Best shows is
that the supposed rise in school shootings is a phantom trend. School
shootings are in fact declining sharply. Media stories about school shootings,
on the other hand, are far more frequent than the statistics on school
violence merit. In 1993, for example, there were 44 violent school deaths
and about 200 news stories on school violence. In 2001, on the other hand,
there were only 15 violent school deaths, but more than 450y news stories
about school violence. Many of those stories include warnings about an
"epidemic" of school violence that are simply not based in fact.
And keep in mind
that, in addition to the declining rate of school violence, in absolute
terms, the number of violent school deaths is low. For every million children
who attend school, there is less than one violent school-related death
per year. Only 1 percent of American school children killed by violence
are hurt at school, despite the fact that they spend a large percentage
of their day at school. So on a more than million to one chance that a
child might be the victim of a school shooting, we are putting up with
the far more widespread costs of zero-tolerance policies. Given the rate
of death by car, maybe we ought to forget about suspending kids who point
their fingers and say bang, and kick out children who play at driving
instead.
Zero-tolerance policies
are often paired with anti-bullying programs, many of which are based
on statistics like one published in the April 25, 2001 issue of the Journal
of the American Medical Association. That article, widely reported
in the media, claimed that 30 percent of youths "reported moderate
or frequent involvement in bullying." But Best shows that this survey
puffed up the figures by adopting a very broad definition of bullying,
and by combining the numbers of kids who were defined as bullies with
those who were classified as victims. A stricter and more plausible definition
of bullying, and a counting only of victims, would result in an 8 percent
rate of students subjected to bullying, not 30 percent. And of the 15
violent school deaths in 2001, how many do we know were actually caused
by bullying? We're obviously talking about a tie to bullying in a mere
fraction of cases — in what is already a more than million to one
shot of violent death at school. What then is the justification for bearing
the costs of our zero-tolerance policies, other than the hysteria generated
by media hype?
But maybe there's
more to zero tolerance than that. Remember, a new generation of left-leaning
ed-school graduates has been pushing to eliminate even games like dodgeball
from the playground. Given that, it seems fairly obvious that all the
hype about school shootings and bullying has turned into a convenient
excuse to purge American culture of competition and spiritedness —
especially boyish spiritedness. Christina Hoff Sommers has already documented
the trend in The War Against Boys, and it's hard not to see the suspension
of children for pointing their fingers like guns in a game of "army
and aliens" as anything other than part of that war against boys.
If that's what's
really motivating administrators, then mere evidence will not suffice
to change their minds. But for those parents and administrators who have
put up with the foolishness and injustice of zero-tolerance policies out
of fear for their children's lives, Joel Best's article ought to matter.
The supposed explosion of school violence and bullying at the base of
our zero-tolerance policies is a lie. Maybe when that fact is known, those
minds that remain open will change.
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aybe you missed the
latest "zero tolerance" horror story. It seems that seven fourth-grade
boys were suspended from school for pointing their fingers like guns during
a game of "army-and-aliens" on the playground. What's worse,
the school brought these boys in for questioning to see if their parents
owned guns-as if that should matter. This scary little instance of bullying
(bullying by school administrators, that is) was reported in a long and
thoughtful 
