Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment in Our Schools :A Handbook for Parents, Students, Educators, and Citizens

by William Ayers (Editor), Bernardine Dohrn (Editor), Rick Ayers (Editor)

A handbook for parents, students, educators, and citizens: a clear-eyed collection that takes aim at the replacement of teaching with punishment in America's schools. "Zero tolerance" began as a prohibition against guns, but it has quickly expanded into a frenzy of punishment and tougher disciplinary measures in American schools. Ironically, as this timely collection makes clear, recent research indicates that as schools adopt more zero tolerance policies they in fact become less safe, in part because the first casualties of these measures are the central, critical relationships between teacher and student and between school and community. Zero Tolerance assembles prominent educators and intellectuals, including the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., Michelle Fine, and Patricia Williams, along with teachers, students, and community activists, to show that the vast majority of students expelled from schools under new disciplinary measures are sent home for nonviolent violations; that the rush to judge and punish disproportionately affects black and Latino children; and that the new disciplinary ethos is eroding constitutional protections of privacy, free speech, and due process. Sure to become the focus of controversy, Zero Tolerance presents a passionate, multifaceted argument against the militarization of our schools.

Topics include:
• Media and anti-youth policies
• Race, civil rights, and school discipline
• Student writing on zero tolerance
• Community agencies dealing with rehabilitation
• Zero tolerance and mentally ill students

Genres: Biography, Education

263 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2001

About the author

William Ayers is Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired), education activist, and bestselling author of Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom (with Rick Ayers), To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, Third Edition, and To Teach: The Journey, in Comics (with Ryan Alexander-Tanner).

Reviews

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much of what makes this book relevant are the "good intentions" of people who run some of the "best" schools in the country. Ayers is a refreshing look at the practice of "no excuses" that has become so pervasive in many low-income and urban, metropolitan schools. What is remarkable, as Ayers, lays out, is the manner in which these zero tolerance schools so often mimic the very systems at play in U.S. prisons and mental facilities. These practices are often heralded as necessary and critical tot he function of a well-organized/structured school for students of color. However, their suburban counterparts need far less "punishment" and are able to thrive in an environment that fosters and applauds their creativity not create a sense of "other."

Ayers makes salient points regarding the difference between punishment and consequences. No school can exist without consequences, and every child and individual wants clear boundaries in almost every aspect of their life. The difference between engaging in a power dynamic in high school with young adults is that far too often, these dynamics are not biologically appropriate and serve more to create a manner of compliance for the sake of compliance with no real root in sound pedagogical practices.

Finally, I recommend this book for any teacher struggling to differentiate between the academic and behavioral expectations of their students. The misguided thought that teachers can only instruct when their students are quietly in their desks serving a ready recipients/vessels of knowledge to be dispensed by the teacher further points to problems not only in the expectations of specific teacher's rooms, but also in the manner in which we choose to educate our nation's students who need it the most.

Ayers would speak even to the special education classification that has become pervasive as well. For rural, urban and mostly low socio-economic areas and districts in the U.S., issues labeling of students who need special services is often done too quickly and with little to no thought for context of the student; however, in more affluent communities, these are often overlooked and not done as a way to avoid stigmatizing students. Such practices serve as yet another way in which the need for constant punishment rather than effective feedback and growth has rendered schools helpless in truly educating students, predominately minorities.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look into the zero-tolerance policy that has been implented in our school system. I found the book to be very eye-opening as a parent.