Kids ought to be protected.

http://www.ethicaltreatment.org/
http://zerointelligence.net/

These sites show that both the legal system and the system of discipline in schools need desperately to be changed to save children.

A couple pre-teens "playing doctor" could end up being charged with rape and sent to an orwellian "re-education camp" where they're made to go through brainwashing using methods designed in the '30s to "cure" homosexuals. The first site chronicles the offenses and the punishments in graphic detail. When you realize it's being done to children, you might be sick.

"Zero Tollerance" laws mandate schools to punish to the maximum extent possible, expulsion, regardless of circumstance. Did you accidentally leave your scout knife in your jacket and bring it to the office when you got to school? Expulsion. Are you a gang member who was caught carrying his knife to use as a weapon? Expulsion. Good lives are being destroyed.

Yeah zero tolerance laws are bullshit.  More authority loving pussies.

To be honest, I'd like to see a position that acts as an independant judiary in schools. Often kids end up in the middle of political battles administrators or teachers are having, or they end up being in a 'court' where the administrators or teachers are judge, jury, executioner, and witness all at the same time. In that case, we'd also be able to trash zero tollerance laws, because the judiary would hopefully have the competence to enforce the laws of the school coherently, consistently, and objectively.

If you are a kid you have no choice but to believe everything their parents tell them. If kids follow their parent's example and act like savages it's the parent's fault. Whilst kids should be disciplinned, they should not be denied opportunities and rights as a result, their parents should.

Totally irrelevant. An honour student eagle scout was expelled because he accidentally brought his scout knife to school and brought it to the main office when he realized he had it on him. The things that are happening are fundamentally wrong and it's not the parents fault nor the students fault for the issue, but the systems fault for fucking people over so badly.