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6-Year-Old Scout Suspended for Bringing Knife-Fork-Spoon Utensil to School
Fox ^ | October 12, 2009

Posted on 10/12/2009 3:26:07 PM PDT by NYer

Six-year-old Zachary Christie was so excited to become a Cub Scout that he brought his camping utensil to school. The tool serves as a spoon, a fork and a knife, and Zachary wanted to use it at lunch.

What Zachary didn't know was that the gizmo violated his school's zero-tolerance policy on weapons. And now the Christina School District in Newark, Del., has suspended the first grader and ordered him to attend the district's reform school for 45 days.

Zachary's parents insist their son did not intend to hurt anyone, and they are fighting to overturn the ruling.

"Zachary wears a suit and tie some days to school by his own choice because he takes school so seriously," Zachary's mother, Debbie Christie, told the New York Times. "He is not some sort of threat to his classmates."

The school district, in a statement, said rules are rules and defended its decision to suspend the boy.

"At this time, the Student Code of Conduct does not take into consideration a child's age in a Level three offense," the statement read.

"This is the first incident this year involving a student under the age of seven in possession of a dangerous instrument. Christina School District staff and the Christina Board of Education are constantly examining ways to improve policies regarding student discipline."

At a meeting with the school disciplinary committee last week, Zachary's karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé made the case for the boy's character.

And Zachary's mother has started a Web site to attract support for her son before a meeting of the school board on Tuesday.

Click here for more from The New York Times.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; US: Delaware
KEYWORDS: discipline; education; scouts; zerotolerance
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1 posted on 10/12/2009 3:26:08 PM PDT by NYer
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To: NYer

The perp
6 year old Zachary Christie

Are we still living in America?

2 posted on 10/12/2009 3:27:20 PM PDT by NYer ( "One Who Prays Is Not Afraid; One Who Prays Is Never Alone"- Benedict XVI)
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To: NYer

Oh, come on, whatever happened to the selective enforcement of rules based on common sense?


3 posted on 10/12/2009 3:27:50 PM PDT by GAB-1955 (I write books, love my wife, serve my nation, and believe in the Resurrection.)
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To: NYer

If the kid is in karate, HE is more of a “dangerous instrument” than the spork. Sheesh.


4 posted on 10/12/2009 3:28:26 PM PDT by Dasaji (On a beach somewhere in my head...)
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To: NYer

Have to side with the school this time. This kind of thing has happened so many times you would think the parents would have had the sense to keep the kid from taking a knife to school. Sheesh.


5 posted on 10/12/2009 3:28:30 PM PDT by LiberConservative ("Sarah Palin irritates all the right people." -Dennis Miller)
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To: NYer

In 1968 I took a shotgun to school and the police showed up... because the police chief volunteered for skeet shooting.


6 posted on 10/12/2009 3:29:17 PM PDT by WalterSobchak2012
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To: NYer

FReep ‘em. Man up, parents, and homeschool him or send him to private school.


7 posted on 10/12/2009 3:30:24 PM PDT by Tax-chick (There is no "I" in "Tejano conjunto." It's all about the mission.)
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To: NYer

Abolish government schools. Problem solved.


8 posted on 10/12/2009 3:30:34 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan (In Edward Kennedy’s America, federal funding of brothels is a right, not a privilege.)
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To: NYer

Biden’s home state. This is beyond foolish and I think the important thing for Patriots to do is to NOT let these stories dumb us down and become acceptable nor let them slide off our backs. This is NOT the norm and it’s not America!


9 posted on 10/12/2009 3:31:22 PM PDT by albie
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To: NYer

Ludicrous. Private schools people, private schools.


10 posted on 10/12/2009 3:32:50 PM PDT by americanophile (Sarcasm: satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language.)
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To: LiberConservative

I asume you belive all parent do a strip and cavety search before they send thier little ones to school.
Rules are not laws, they are rules.


11 posted on 10/12/2009 3:33:09 PM PDT by Colvin (Harry Reid is a sap sucking idiot.)
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To: NYer

Seriously, these people are too stupid to be educating anyone’s children. If you care at all about your kid’s education, get them out of public school. Homeschool them, send them to parochial school, send them to your church’s school, let the hobos down by the railroad tracks educate them, you couldn’t do any worse than letting these pinheads have access to your kid’s mind for the next 12 or 16 years.


12 posted on 10/12/2009 3:33:31 PM PDT by marron
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To: NYer

A knife is a knife until you use it as a weapon!

Same goes for a gun.

Stop using the word WEAPON!


13 posted on 10/12/2009 3:34:23 PM PDT by devistate one four (Back by popular demand: America love or leave it (GTFOOMC) TET68)
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To: albie
I remember seeing these “fat knives” as we called them back in Scout days in the 50s and 60s. Along with the knife, spoon and fork there was a cork screw, scissor, toenail clipper and tiny saw blade.
14 posted on 10/12/2009 3:35:25 PM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: americanophile; NYer
Ludicrous. Private schools people, private schools.

Exactly. Grandparents, you may have to help. But get those kids out of public school.

15 posted on 10/12/2009 3:35:29 PM PDT by marron
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To: marron; NYer
Homeschool them, send them to parochial school, send them to your church’s school, let the hobos down by the railroad tracks educate them

An interesting result showed in a recent study by Home School Legal Defense Association was that test scores, on average between 84th and 88th percentile, did not correlate with whether the child was taught using a a full-curriculum, high-contact, school-at-home method, or a "give him some meals and a library card" method, or anything in between.

16 posted on 10/12/2009 3:36:23 PM PDT by Tax-chick (There is no "I" in "Tejano conjunto." It's all about the mission.)
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To: NYer

I remember when I was in junior high school, around 1950, their was contest to sell magazines. I sold enough to get a hunting knife which I received at school. I carried it around school all day and showed it off to my buddies. No problems from anybody including teachers.


17 posted on 10/12/2009 3:37:09 PM PDT by Uncle Hal
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To: NYer

Zachary reminds me of Damien from THE OMEN.
Can’t you see the 666 just beneath the part in his hair?
I have read of at least 100 ‘incidents’ like this, it seems, since this crap started happening. The way it works is alway the same:
True tragedies like Virginia Tech and Columbine happen right under the noses of sleeping bureaucrats, functionaries too tied up in PC to acknowledge something that needs to be nipped in the bud.....and they do NOTHING about it ‘until it’s too late’-—and what they IN FACT do, when it’s , yes, ‘too late’, is redouble their efforts at adopting a Zero tolerance policy on a CHILD, who never had or could show any signs of being a misfit. The downright ABSURDITY of what this little boy and his family are being put through is in DIRECT PROPORTION to what the VTech and Columbine perpetrators were NOT put through. This is the absurd way it works, when you’re dealing with government schools.


18 posted on 10/12/2009 3:37:22 PM PDT by supremedoctrine
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To: NYer

The kid’s dad needs to bring a Barbie doll to school and ask the principal if it’s a weapon. After the principal says no(of course), the dad should use it to kick the snot out of the principal and explain that it’s not what the item is that’s in a kid’s hand... It’s what’s in the kid’s heart and mind that should be a concern.

Anything can be used as a weapon. I make my 16-year old keep a knife in the center console of her car at all times. Not as a weapon, but to cut away her seat belt if she gets in an accident and needs to extricate herself.

Nanny state rules simply aren’t effective and producing the results they’re aiming for.


19 posted on 10/12/2009 3:38:03 PM PDT by Two Kids' Dad (((( Hey 0bama, Kenya show us the long-form BC? ))))
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To: NYer

Zachary reminds me of Damien from THE OMEN.
Can’t you see the 666 just beneath the part in his hair?
I have read of at least 100 ‘incidents’ like this, it seems, since this crap started happening. The way it works is alway the same:
True tragedies like Virginia Tech and Columbine happen right under the noses of sleeping bureaucrats, functionaries too tied up in PC to acknowledge something that needs to be nipped in the bud.....and they do NOTHING about it ‘until it’s too late’-—and what they IN FACT do, when it’s , yes, ‘too late’, is redouble their efforts at adopting a Zero tolerance policy on a CHILD, who never had or could show any signs of being a misfit. The downright ABSURDITY of what this little boy and his family are being put through is in DIRECT PROPORTION to what the VTech and Columbine perpetrators were NOT put through. This is the absurd way it works, when you’re dealing with government schools.


20 posted on 10/12/2009 3:38:07 PM PDT by supremedoctrine
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To: Eric in the Ozarks

When I was in school, we all carried pocket knives all the time. During recess we played “stretch”.

Actually, at that time it was normal for all adult men and most kids to carry a pocket knife. It hasn’t been that long ago that I used to carry a folding belt knife all the time. Not for any particular reason, but just because.


21 posted on 10/12/2009 3:38:55 PM PDT by marron
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To: americanophile

“Ludicrous. Private schools people, private schools”.

...except any “Montessori” schools. They’ve now come out of the closet with their new “global” insignia. Teachers are libs and the kids turn out to be artistic, tree hugging sissys.


22 posted on 10/12/2009 3:40:59 PM PDT by albie
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To: albie

hahahaha...


23 posted on 10/12/2009 3:42:20 PM PDT by americanophile (Sarcasm: satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language.)
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To: Uncle Hal

what a nice memory. hell, in those days if a kid did NOT have a pocket knife on him to play ‘mumbly peg’, (remember that game?!), at recess or lunch or right after school, he might have been considered queer.


24 posted on 10/12/2009 3:43:47 PM PDT by bobby.223
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To: NYer

Private school or permanent home schooling are their answers. They would be crazy to send their kid back into a system that wants to send him to 45 days of reform school.


25 posted on 10/12/2009 3:45:59 PM PDT by JLS
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To: NYer

“Are we still living in America?”

Ni, we haven’t been living in America since 1988, when Ronald Reagan left the White House. Instead, we’ve been living in Amerika, a creation of the leftist nanny state social police.

- JP


26 posted on 10/12/2009 3:46:33 PM PDT by Josh Painter ("Government cannot make you happy or healthy or wealthy or wise." - Sarah Heath Palin)
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To: bobby.223

So you have figured out their goal. When something bad happens, in this case school violence, the left glooms onto it to advance their agenda.


27 posted on 10/12/2009 3:46:59 PM PDT by JLS
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To: Tax-chick

I read on another thread that the mom was homeschooling him now until this is settled. Maybe she will decide to continue after that.


28 posted on 10/12/2009 3:48:00 PM PDT by Marmolade
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To: Dasaji

“Too Much Pork For Just One Spork!”

Great song by Southern Culture On The Skids!


29 posted on 10/12/2009 3:51:53 PM PDT by Dr. Bogus Pachysandra ( Ya can't pick up a turd by the clean end!)
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To: NYer
I suspect that they are talking about one of these.

How utterly preposterous...

30 posted on 10/12/2009 3:52:44 PM PDT by CarryaBigStick
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To: LiberConservative
you would think the parents would have had the sense to keep the kid from taking a knife to school.

Yeah.. I think they should all have plastic spoons instead. Well.....except that you can break off a plastic spoon and be back to square one.

31 posted on 10/12/2009 3:56:31 PM PDT by LaineyDee (Don't mess with Texas wimmen!)
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To: LiberConservative
Have to side with the school this time. This kind of thing has happened so many times you would think the parents would have had the sense to keep the kid from taking a knife to school. Sheesh.

Six year old kids don't understand the sick and complex world we live in, so it was a pretty naive and innocent mistake for him wanting to show off his valued possession to his peers. I think the punishment is all out of proportion to the "crime". Should he be punished and sent to reform school for the fault of his parents or the insanity of his educators? Is that your idea of justice?

32 posted on 10/12/2009 3:58:22 PM PDT by TexasRepublic (Obama = Jim Jones coercing us into suicide on a national scale)
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To: GAB-1955
> Oh, come on, whatever happened to the selective enforcement of rules based on common sense?

THIS Retired Boy Scout wants to see what this "Weapon of Mass Destruction" actually looks like. Was this it?


33 posted on 10/12/2009 3:58:57 PM PDT by DieHard the Hunter (Is mise an ceann-cinnidh. Cha ghéill mi do dhuine. Fàg am bealach.)
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To: TexasRepublic

Hell, why not just shoot the little bastid and bill the parents for the bullet? /sarcasm


34 posted on 10/12/2009 4:01:10 PM PDT by TexasRepublic (Obama = Jim Jones coercing us into suicide on a national scale)
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To: NYer
Are we still living in America?

Nope. Standard communist methods of controlling the population. Starts with the youth.

35 posted on 10/12/2009 4:04:36 PM PDT by Logical me (Oh, well!!!)
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To: NYer

The school would have called out the SWAT team if the little terrorist had been armed with a pointy stick...”Those things can kill an elephant”.


36 posted on 10/12/2009 4:11:34 PM PDT by crazyhorse691 (Now that the libs are in power dissent is not only unpatriotic, but, it is also racist.)
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To: GAB-1955
"Oh, come on, whatever happened to the selective enforcement of rules based on common sense?"

"Zero Tolerance" actually means Zero thought.

37 posted on 10/12/2009 4:14:21 PM PDT by Steve Van Doorn (*in my best Eric cartman voice* 'I love you guys')
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To: Two Kids' Dad
The kid’s dad needs to bring a Barbie doll to school and ask the principal if it’s a weapon.

You'll note that it was "Zachary's karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé" who went to school to vouch for his character. I would submit to you that if children like Zachary had regular (married to mommy) dads like boys did in the past, the schools would be afraid to try stupid crap like this.

38 posted on 10/12/2009 4:20:52 PM PDT by madprof98 ("moritur et ridet" - salvianus)
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To: NYer

Enough leftist, unionist idiocy!!!

IMHO, every administrator, teacher and school board member (past and present) who contributed to forming and enacting the mindless policies that enabled this fiasco should be introduced to hot tar, feathers, and a freshly-split rail -- ASAP. And they should be taken for a "ride" in such fashion and of such distance that they can never find their way back to said community.

And, "Pour encourage les autres", the event should be televised on every functioning channel every day for a week...

39 posted on 10/12/2009 4:22:35 PM PDT by TXnMA ("Allah": Satan's current alias...!!)
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My high school had (and probably still has) a competitive shooting team. From time to time, on our way to competitions, we carried .22s at school, of course with our teachers’ knowledge. Oh, it was another time (but not too long time ago) and another country...


40 posted on 10/12/2009 4:27:22 PM PDT by Behemoth the Cat
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To: NYer
One wonders if the school provides utensils to the children to eat their lunches, and if they do, if the school's administration shouldn't be collectively charged with illegal weapons trade.
41 posted on 10/12/2009 4:40:33 PM PDT by SampleMan (No one should die on a gov. waiting list., or go broke because the gov. has dictated their salary.)
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To: LiberConservative
Have to side with the school this time.

Are you #$@#$$ me? The rules and the enforcement are idiotic.

42 posted on 10/12/2009 4:41:49 PM PDT by SampleMan (No one should die on a gov. waiting list., or go broke because the gov. has dictated their salary.)
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To: NYer

The TALIBAN and Al Queda don’t seem to have this problem. Neither do the Palestinians. I guess we are training our children to be the perfect VICTIMS to the above.


43 posted on 10/12/2009 4:42:34 PM PDT by Dogbert41
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To: WalterSobchak2012
In 1968 I took a shotgun to school

At any given time we would have 2-6 guns in our shop class and that was in the 80's. And every boy carried a knife. Most of the boys carried a large lock blade openly on their belts.

44 posted on 10/12/2009 4:43:26 PM PDT by SampleMan (No one should die on a gov. waiting list., or go broke because the gov. has dictated their salary.)
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To: Marmolade

A lot of people are terrified of the *idea* of homeschooling, and don’t understand that it’s basically doing things with your child. If the parents like their child and have interests themselves, that’s really all they need.


45 posted on 10/12/2009 4:54:55 PM PDT by Tax-chick (There is no "I" in "Tejano conjunto." It's all about the mission.)
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To: Arthur McGowan

Agreed. These schools are run by people who are mentally ill.

They’ve forgotten what normal is.


46 posted on 10/12/2009 4:57:39 PM PDT by B Knotts (Calvin Coolidge Republican)
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To: DieHard the Hunter

47 posted on 10/12/2009 4:57:45 PM PDT by Tax-chick (There is no "I" in "Tejano conjunto." It's all about the mission.)
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To: WalterSobchak2012
I know what you mean, back in those days we would bring our guns to school and go shooting after school and no ones pantys got wet because of it. Nowadays I have had the “police come to my house because some citizen complained about a “youth “ with a gun walking down the road. The “youth” was my 15 year old walking down the road with a BB gun to go plinking. Mind you my closest neighbor is 1/4 mile away and we are surrounded by 6000 acres of state and private forest and still some busy body has a conniption about a kid and a BB gun. You can't get away from these people!
48 posted on 10/12/2009 6:03:14 PM PDT by ABN 505
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To: NYer
Last week it was an Eagle Scout suspended for having a 3" pocket knife locked in his car.

This week, a Cub Scout with camping utensils.

Public education! Hell yea!

49 posted on 10/12/2009 6:30:50 PM PDT by spodefly (This is my tag line. There are many like it, but this one is mine.)
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To: Tax-chick

AHA! He had a knife AND a fork. He was going to kill em and then eat em. Little devil’s a cannibal. They should lock him up forever!

/sarcasm


50 posted on 10/12/2009 7:41:51 PM PDT by Borderline
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