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I do think that the zero tolerance stuff needs to go. When our son entered middle school (he’s 34) I remember the parents’ meeting where the principal said that every three minutes these kids think of sex and/or punching the kid next to him/her. Then he laughed. In other words, he had common sense. Same kid cut himself in art on an exacto knife and you would have thought it was an international crisis. He was not treated for the cut, he was isolated by the nurse who literally threw a bandaid at him and told him to wash it and bind it himself. I’m surprised that they didn’t call the CDC and the EPA. Later our daughter was suspended for having a pseudophed that I had given her in her pocket. She and some friends were being searched for supposed possession of drugs. I think that it all started going downhill around then.

I see a future call to your police department.

Police "how may we help you?"

Home owner "someone has broken into my house"

Police "please describe the suspect"

Home owner "he's a black male about 6 foot...."

Police "let me stop you right there, we have reached our quota of black suspects today, we could put down for a response call tomorrow."

Home owner "never mind I have a gun....."

Smith has a lot of good points in his article, but makes the usual conservative mistake of blaming "bad" schools for a lot of the problems. The facts are: the students usually create the bad schools, and not the other way around.

I'm reading Robert Weissburg's "Bad Students, not Bad Schools" and he pretty must quashes the idea that every kid is brimming with love for learning but foiled by bad schools and bad teachers. A great many mostly black schools are simply holding tanks for future criminals. Few of the students are interested in learning, and most instruction is wasted on many these youths. Better schools or teachers will do little or nothing to change the bad students into good students. Many teachers have been assaulted and hurt badly not only by violent students but also by the parents of violent students who don't like white teachers telling them about their kid's problems.

As liberals are fooled by the idea that racism causes poor students, conservatives are fooled by the idea that charter schools and better teachers will save these poor students. They couldn't be more wrong. There is only a very small percentage of these students who will be helped by better schools and teachers. But nothing can help the great majority of the students. They don't want to be helped.

Truthfully, long ago the states should have intervened against “zero tolerance” policies in schools, because it is both school teachers and administrators abrogating their disciplinary responsibilities, and it also means children facing arrest by police officers for extremely petty and childish reasons, not serious criminal activities.

If teachers and administrators are terrified of lawsuits, this too is something states should intervene to stop, on the grounds that schools are “alma maters” (temporary foster parents), so should be exempt from lawsuits on frivolous grounds. If states permit limited corporal punishment in the schools, there should be no possibility of litigation at the state level about it, unless grievous physical harm has occurred to the child.

Please note that none of the above has anything to do with racism.

This being said, states should also consider boarding schools for at-risk elementary age children, based on parental misconduct. That is, if parents have previous convictions for violent crimes, or crimes against children, or gang membership, or even substantial poverty, it should be grounds for that state’s child protective services to declare them “semi-unfit” as parents, and to put their young children in a state boarding school.

This would not strip their parents of their legal parentage, nor would it in any way be seen as prejudicial against their children, but it would guarantee that their children had a proper diet, proper education, and were capable of attending secondary school on graduation.

States might then even consider providing a military secondary school for junior and senior high school age children whose parents were still unable to raise them properly. This would give those children better opportunities for success than an ordinary public school.

In effect it would break the welfare, dependency and crime cycle, and give the children a fresh start.