The road to a lifetime of employment at Costco is paved with good academic intentions. Figuring out the best way to teach children is complicated at the best of times. And sometimes, even ideas that sound like slam dunks end up backfiring worse than that rusted muscle car your uncle insists he's going to clean up one day. Everyone involved in the following initiatives meant well, but well-meaning bad ideas are still bad ideas.

5 Putting Cops In Schools Turns Everything Into a Criminal Complaint

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It didn't take too many well-publicized school shootings to start a nationwide push to put police officers in every school. For parents, it seems like there's no downside other than the cost -- if there's even a tiny chance that an on-duty school cop will stop the next Sandy Hook massacre, isn't it worth it?

But the Problem Is ...

It turns out that there's a weird side effect to having armed police within shouting distance at any given moment: Suddenly, every little thing becomes a reason to call the cops. After all, they're right there. It's kind of like how 20 years ago, nobody could think of a single reason to have a cell phone ("Why would I need to call somebody while I'm in line at Subway?"), but now that you have one, you're on that shit all the time.

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"Want peppers?"

"Let me check with my Twitter followers."

So suddenly, schools view police officers as great tools for enforcing rules against petty kid crimes like schoolyard fights and minor vandalism. You know, stuff that used to be handled with detention or making the offender write "I will not start a fight in the cafeteria just because Chad threw shade on my girl" 100 times on the whiteboard. Once cops came onto the scene, the schools realized there was a new and exciting solution to their disciplinary problems available: handcuffs!

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He'll think twice before peeking during a game of Grounders again.

On the plus side, arresting students lets teachers and staff wash their hands of troublesome kids and spend more time making mojitos in the lounge. On the negative side, there's pretty much everything else. Take the 2004-2005 school year in America's dong, Florida: There were 26,990 school-related referrals to Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice, and 76 percent of those referrals were for misdemeanors, including assault (read: throw down at the flagpole) and disorderly conduct (read: being a teenager).

Not ridiculous enough for you? Okay, take Jackson, Mississippi, where only four percent of students arrested were suspected of felonies. To give you an idea of the misdemeanors the other 96 percent were arrested for, the school district was sued for allegedly handcuffing students to railings for violating the dress code and not doing their homework. You've probably read about a student getting arrested for spraying perfume, or for not wearing a belt, or for belching in class.