At the start of this year, the President Barack Obama administration made a New Year's resolution for schools nationwide. It urged them to drop the 'zero tolerance' approach to discipline, joining a growing chorus of critics of policies that dispense serious punishments for small rule violations.
The recommendation from the Department of Justice is nonbinding, but comes as schools across the country have been edging away from zero tolerance on their own. It's about time. The essence of zero tolerance is that normal but undesirable behavior counts as a strike against students. And students may get only one strike before they're out-sometimes literally, in the form of suspensions or even expulsions. Zero tolerance is well known to harm students, especially minorities, so its apparent demise should be a relief for kids and teenagers.
But the potential end of zero tolerance is also great news for a surprising part of society: the tech sector.
That's because technology - mobile in particular - has come under fire in zero tolerance enforcement, sending students a warped message about technology and running counter to the Silicon Valley spirit that accepts making mistakes as normal-even beneficial-to personal and professional growth. At a time when today's tech leaders are concerned about educating tomorrow's innovators, putting an end to zero tolerance should be a top tech priority.
Absent such reform, tech leaders may well find themselves with a next generation that has learned that normal behavior can get them in trouble and that, once they are in trouble, there is no way for them to learn from their mistakes. Such fear and frustration are hardly the sentiments likely to inspire visionary new tech leaders for the 21st century.
Although many in Silicon Valley might not realize it, zero tolerance tags them and their products with a bad rap. Google may hold itself to the credo of ' don't be evil,' but zero tolerance schools see a student with an Android phone in her hand as slipping over to the dark side. These schools often treat students' personal tech gear as contraband; in some places, such treatment disproportionately affects students of color. Even when students use their phones or other gadgets reasonably during the school day- taking a call from a parent serving abroad in the military, let's say-they can get in serious trouble. Even a one-time infraction- like a phone accidentally ringing during class -can result in some form of suspension and confiscation of the offending gadget.
When schools treat tech products in a similar way to alcohol, drugs, or weapons, tech companies should be concerned. This categorization signals to students that technology itself is dangerous and simply using it makes a person threatening.
These messages are unfair, and many students rightly regard them that way. A report released recently by researchers at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University on teens' perspectives on technology in schools found significant frustration among students over 'teachers' reactions to what [students] perceived to be minor infractions of school mobile device policies (e.g., collecting phones if a student took a picture, or if the phone was seen at all).' Not surprisingly, these responses then 'led to further questioning of the [schools' tech] policies' by students.
Such policies may be-in the words of one well-known teenage pundit-' way harsh.' For example, in Manchester, New Hampshire-the largest school district in that state-the 2012-2013 high school handbook said that students were forbidden from being on 'personal audio visual equipment, such as but not limited to MP3 players, iPods, Game Boys, cellular phones' anytime during the school day. 'Using or displaying' this gear was a Level II offense (on a scale of 1-3) and could lead to in-school detention. Three or more tech transgressions became a Level III offense (the highest possible) and could lead to out-of-school suspension. Other Level III conduct included assault, gang activity, and use of explosives. (Perhaps the school district construed the phrase 'tech boom' too literally?)
For a portion of the last school year and all of the current school year, Manchester has taken a much more reasonable approach: students can use cell phones and other gear in certain ways during the school day, although some parts of the building are gear free. Schools in other states are also adopting more tech tolerant policies, although zero tech tolerance is by no means gone for good. Some schools do continue to offer suspensions for students who don't keep their phones off and out of sight while school is in session.
Of course, there are times when students use technology in ways that do warrant serious consequences-sometimes even suspensions or expulsions-like cyberbullying. Also, speaking from personal experience as an educator, it's no fun to stand in front of a classroom and look out on faces that reflect not so much the glow of knowledge but the light of screens awash in shopping, tweeting and gaming.
But it's not fair to hate the player-or even the game. Students aren't going to learn better techniquette by receiving heavy-handed punishments. They're going to learn it by using technology regularly in their daily lives, including in school, and having rational norms established by their communities. (Teenagers texting in the halls between classes-no big deal; texting during a test-not okay at all.) Schools exist to teach students. It's a cop-out for them to take students out of the classroom and stop teaching them at precisely the time they have the most to learn.
The tech sector should pay close attention to schools' response to the administration's call to show some tolerance. This is a moment for schools to show that they have learned their own lessons-that something almost everybody does shouldn't be grounds for punishment. And even when students do make actual mistakes, they should be allowed to learn from these poor choices, not be sunk by them. Silicon Valley-and beyond-needs students to stay in school, graduate, and become playful, courageous innovators as well as responsible citizens. The 21st century demands tech tolerance, not the false equation of technology with trouble.
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