Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 9, 2010

The parents of Rachael Greer and Mason Jammer would be thoroughly justified in exploring the possibility of home-schooling their young children.

Both Rachael, a seventh grade student from Kentuckiana, Indiana, and Mason, a kindergartner from Ionia, Michigan, were suspended for entirely inocuous behavior considered impermissible under so-called ?zero tolerance? policies.

During gym class, Rachael was handed a prescription drug pill by another student. She promptly handed it back, saying ?I don?t want it.? Yet school administrators, displaying the kind of blinkered legalism that might have struck the Pharisees as exessive, insisted that merely by touching a pill she didn?t ask for and promptly disposed of, Rachael was guilty of illicit ?drug possession.?

Mason?s grave offense was to curl a hand into what was described as the ?shape of a gun? and point it at another student. He was playful, not violent. Yet Mason was slapped with a disciplinary suspension.

?Zero tolerance? has nothing to do with fighting drug abuse and violence. It?s intended to cultivate collectivist conformity in children.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.