GROWING UP WITH NO MARGIN FOR ERROR

CHICAGO -- Our perception of adolescence has, in recent years, become
muddled. Are teenagers still emotionally maturing children, or are they
miniature versions of fully formed adults?

For crimes ranging from murder to drug possession, we now routinely try
children as adults, and sentences are meted out according to the crime
without any consideration for the child's situation.

Nothing exemplifies this confusion more than the zero-tolerance policies
that more and more public schools think will keep students in line.

Simply put, zero tolerance means that if a student is caught breaking
certain rules -- from smoking cigarettes to carrying weapons -- the
punishment is swift and often preordained, not unlike the determinate
sentencing we see in the adult criminal courts. In Tennessee, for example,
it has been reported that the number of students expelled for
zero-tolerance offenses quadrupled from 1994 to 1997.

We have been sickened by the spate of school shootings, Columbine High
School in Colorado being the most terrifying. But in our scramble to make
our schools safer, have we become intolerant of our children's mistakes, of
their errors in judgment?

It goes without saying that our first priority has to be safety, and so in
the case of weapons we must and should take a hard line. But what about
fisticuffs or beer-drinking or possession of a small amount of marijuana?
In adolescence, shouldn't there be some room for missteps? Isn't that what
the very term "growing up" suggests?

By now, most Americans who watch television news have seen the short
videotape taken in September at a high school football game in Decatur,
Ill. It shows a group of African-American students throwing punches at one
another as they stumble through the bleachers, colliding with other
students and parents with young children.

No one was seriously injured, yet the school board, under its
zero-tolerance policy for fighting, expelled six students for two years (a
seventh voluntarily left school), making no plans for them to attend
alternative institutions. In effect, the board told these children to take
a walk.

No one could possibly condone the actions of these six teenagers. (Jesse
Jackson, whose presence in Decatur last week brought this story to light,
issued an unfortunate apologia: that the fight was no worse than the
bruising play between the New York Knicks and Miami Heat.)

And almost everyone agrees that the boys should be punished in some manner.

But as we've come to view our adolescents as either potential victims or
menaces to society, we've lost the flexibility to respond to our children
as individuals.

We're told, for example, that some of the students involved in the brawl
had solid grade-point averages while others had dismally poor attendance
records and, according to one school official, three were "third-year
freshmen." Don't those facts suggest that each of these children might need
a different kind of guidance?

Under pressure from Mr. Jackson, and then from the governor of Illinois,
George Ryan, the school board reduced the punishment to a one-year
suspension, with the option of attending an alternative school. But that,
too, seems unwise, at least applied across the board.

After being away for a year, some of these students would undoubtedly not
find their way back to complete school, and on the street they are likely
to find few moral guideposts.

A compromise has been floated, one that would permit the boys to attend an
alternative school until January, when they would be evaluated for
readmission. Mr. Jackson reportedly supports this compromise, but the
school board has yet to respond.

Last week, the local prosecutor filed juvenile petitions against some of
the boys. In the juvenile courts they will probably receive probation and
be entered into a program that helps get them back on track. In other
words, the juvenile justice system may offer them more of a guiding hand
than the school.

So many children skate along the margins, and statistics reflect that: in
the 1996-97 school year, 454,000 students dropped out. Perhaps schools need
to search for more imaginative ways to both punish and reform. Expulsion
may at times be a necessity, especially when the safety of the school
community is threatened, but let us not tie our hands under the politically
popular banner of zero tolerance, which in the end leaves administrators
with few if any options. After all, adolescence is an opportune time to try
to mold people into morally responsible human beings. I will always
remember what Ted Sizer, the educator, once told me about educating
children: "It takes time, it takes patience, it takes the willingness to
make exceptions."