SCHOOLS SHOULD NOT HAVE SPECIAL SEARCH RIGHTS

Re: Zero tolerance in schools sends the wrong message, April 13.

Finally, a legal argument on the subjugation of human rights in schools.
Many thanks to Lawrence Greenspon for entering the fray, giving credence to
a situation I have been railing against for years -- since about 1970,
actually.

Try to imagine the reaction of employees of a company if they were herded
into a room (against their will, by the way), and held there while their
private possessions were sniffed and rummaged. The employer would never see
the sky outside the courthouse again.

But in a school, where the lawmakers say that students have fewer rights
than accused criminals, the authorities are supreme.

Imagine if citizens could be convicted on hearsay, without being permitted
a defence or to consult with a knowledgeable advocate, and then be quickly
and summarily punished without the right to appeal.

I hope that the time is coming when schools must learn how to treat our
children like citizens, like people. It should be quite a conundrum for an
institution that has no problem allowing teachers to issue detentions to
whole classes when one kid talks out of turn, and whose disciplinary
protocols require confessions for alleged misbehaviour, and in whose
offices one may often find armed and bulletproof-vested constables casually
planning the next lockdown (as they, themselves, call it).

I do not mean to suggest that discipline is not a problem in schools -- far
from it. But so it is in society at large, where law-enforcers are required
to conform to strict codes of evidence and behaviour. That schools have
evaded such requirements is clearly indicative, I believe, of how children
are truly regarded in this culture.

Again, thank you Mr. Greenspon. And, please, don't stop now. It's nowhere
near over.

Tim Penner,

Greely