This is about as obvious as it gets, likely glommed from any one of about 50 prior editorials spanning the past decade and republished on a slow news day.  But to cap off its position, the Times lauds the alternative policy “developed” in Clayton County, Georgia.

School officials who want to back away from the failed zero tolerance policy are looking to a farsighted model developed in Clayton County, Ga., a fast-growing enclave south of Atlanta. Its juvenile courts were nearly overwhelmed by students referred from their schools — mainly for minor offenses like fistfights and disruptive conduct.

Juvenile court officials met with the schools and explained the dangers of criminalizing what are essentially normal childhood behaviors. They also helped to retrain school counselors and cooperated with the schools to create a three-strikes system for dealing with minor offenses.

Oh my God!  A three-strikes system!  Wherever did they come up with such a “farsighted model.”  How innovative.  How brilliant.  How . . . California.  

I really can’t figure out what to make of the New York Times editorial board.  Do they read their own paper?  Are they testing us to see if we do?  Who are the boneheads, us or them?  Of course three strikes is better than zero tolerance, merely because it gives people three tries at zero tolerance before they do something stupid.  But just as was discovered when the three strikes concept was initially developed (and not, by the way, in Clayton County, guys), it gets awfully stupid as well, when the third strike turns out to be some trivial offense, in this case some typically childish behavior that school kids have done forever and was dealt with by ordinary teachers in the normal course of a school day.  Though it takes three tries to get the kid to be prosecuted, and some will invariably never reach the third strike, the concept is as foolish and harmful as zero tolerance, divided by three.

I’ve come to the belief that this has more to do with catchy names than with anyone thinking beyond their hairy knuckles.  Catchy names and easy application.  So easy, even a school principal can apply it.  So easy, no one need fear being criticized for being a blithering idiot for having the cops arrest little Johnny for shooting a spitball.  So easy that officials can always say, don’t blame us for being a bonehead; that’s the policy.

It’s understandable that schools always seek out the easy, CYA method of dealing with students that insulates them from parent and community attack for being harmful to children.  After all, that’s why we pay teachers the big bucks.  But what in the world makes the editorial board of the New York Times engage in such absurdity?

Let’s say that this editorial is found to be pervasively persuasive, and school districts across the country end their zero tolerance policies and institute a three strikes policy.  So the Times will then have a reason to publish a new editorial, attacking three strikes as an over-reaction?  Of course, they won’t do that until someone comes up with some new policy with a cute name and susceptible to knee-jerk application by some school official somewhere.  It would be far too much effort to expect anybody in school to just think.