~They’re really popular among administrators, so there must be something to it.~You can’t make exceptions without undermining the whole concept of having rules.
~People just take advantage of leniency.
~This protects authorities from the consequences of making disparate decisions.
~You must treat all people the same.
~This is a really good example of the rule of law in operation.
~Some things are so awful that there can be no tolerance of them at all.
~The safety of our kids has to come first.
~If there’s any wiggle room, people will think they can talk their way out of whatever it is.
~Doesn’t God sort of have a zero-tolerance about sin?
Post-Show Thoughts: ZTPs are an abdication of the responsibility to use judgment wisely by those we put in positions of authority. They are a response to fears of litigation and tragic precisely because they remove individual thought from discipline, a process which must always remain distinctly humane. Exceptions do not destroy rules. Exceptions validate rules. And no rule can ever cover all of the contingencies enough to justify eliminating human judgment from contributing. They are a symptom of the nonsensical idea that all things can be neatly categorized by labels and measured by simple tests which is corrupting all of modern education. We can call them Zero Thought Policies, Zero Intelligence Policies, or Zero Flexibility Politcies, but the main problem with them is that they wind up treating wildly disparate behaviors the same under the false notion that equal treatment is equitable treatment. Equal and fair are not the same word. A society that replaces oral and essay exams with multiple choice/fill-in-the blank tests will always eventually establish ZTPs for a very simple reason: it has already acknowledged that human thought is not worth preserving or teaching.
Links on ZTP:
ZTP: A Report by American Bar Association
ZTPs Lack Flexibility by USA Today
ZTP (Schools) by Wikipedia
Losing My Tolerance for ZTP by ThisIsTrue.com
ZeroIntelligence.net
ZT Nightmares.com
ZTP and Alcohol by Potsdam.com
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