S<\/span>o, heard the other day about an eleven year old 5th grade<\/a> student who has been suspended and may be expelled for making an imaginary bow and arrow hand expression at school. The school district in PA states that they have a “Zero Tolerance” policy that makes this punishment mandatory. At what point, do we make COMMON sense Mandatory? Look, I get it. We don’t want any tragedies or violent episodes in our schools where educators are entrusted to provide a safe learning experience for our children. But,\u00a0I believe that educators are intelligent enough to make good decisions on their own.<\/p>\n

At what point does “Zero Tolerance” go the way of “Minimum Sentencing Laws” in public opinion? I’m sure that if there were no rules for humans to follow when trying to police others in today’s society that there would be some poor decisions by some humans. I would just hope that in those cases, society would encourage people in charge of situations to just use GOOD SOUND JUDGEMENT.<\/p>\n

However, are we now saying that kids can no longer play “Cowboys & Indians”? Errr, excuse me I meant to say “Cowboys & Native Americans”? I guess that may in fact have to be the implication. I guess one of the simple situations of reminiscing with parents about the price of gas when they were kids is still alright. Nah, probably not ok either given what we now know about fossil fuels and all.<\/span><\/p>\n

TERRORISTS-<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

TERRORIST TRAINING CAMPS- recruiting is getting younger all the time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And while I’m on this rant, I’d like to pontificate on the term “Native American”. Look, I get it. I understand how “they” got to the term, but honestly, doesn’t NATIVE almost sound worse than its intent? Native. That sounds like we are referring to a people as ancient or historic and almost caveman-ian. I know the implication is to designate these people as indigenous or already here before Europeans came to take everything from them. So, who sounds like a Native now?<\/p>\n

How about the Cleveland Natives or the Washington Native Americans?<\/p>\n

#FAIL<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…at what point does “Zero Tolerance” go the way of “Minimum Sentencing Laws” ? So, heard the other day about an eleven year old 5th grade student who has been suspended and may be expelled for making an imaginary bow …<\/p>\n

MMeM, Vol. 9 Issue 87 – UnCommon Sense<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[61],"class_list":["post-1462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-take-on","tag-zero-tolerance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midwesternmeditations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midwesternmeditations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midwesternmeditations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midwesternmeditations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midwesternmeditations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1462"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.midwesternmeditations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1469,"href":"https:\/\/www.midwesternmeditations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions\/1469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midwesternmeditations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midwesternmeditations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midwesternmeditations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}