Oh, PLEASE! It was a POCKET KNIFE, for crying out loud! Holy cats, what on EARTH is wrong with some of the people on this thread? The boy was NOT wrong in any way, nor was the boy who brought the pocket knife in the first place!
What was WRONG was a school rule stating that 9-year-old boys can't carry pocket knives of the kind that every American male of just about every age has carried every decade of this country's existence up until the politically-co-WRECKED latter decades.
This whole thread fries me. The father shouldn't have to resort to home-schooling his kids, boys shouldn't get in trouble for carrying pocketknives and girls shouldn't get in trouble for carrying aspirin in thier purses! I know there will be niminy-piminy prisses who'll whine, "But there was a school rule!" The rule was and IS a wrong and stupid one. Pocket knives don't cause trouble -- BAD KIDS DO. The rules should apply to behavior, not to a handy time-immemorial tool in a red-blooded American boy's pocket. What message are we sending to kids with this kind of screwed priority, of putting the onus on the innocent and useful pocket knife rather than on kids who exhibit hood-like behaviour, pocket knives or not?
Gosh, I HOPE there will be some people here who agree with me and say so!
I agree with you, Finny...this whole thing has gone way too far. That said....
Sonar...I just talked with a friend who works in a CA school district office. She confirmed what I felt. It was WRONG, big time, for your child to be questioned without your being there.
And ESPECIALLY to have to sign the form. She asked me a couple of times..."He's only NINE??? And THIS happened?".
She also confirmed that that form will now remain in his records, from here on out. She said to take care of it legally.
"Gosh, I HOPE there will be some people here who agree with me and say so!"
You are 100% correct in what you say! I also really liked Politically co-WRECKED, that is a good one.
Now Finny, I must ask, are you Lamarr Alexander?
I sold homemade explosives (smoke bombs/stink bombs) when I was in junior high and high school and made a fair bit of money at it funding my chemistry hobby. One day when I was sophmore the high school was evacuated because one of my customers decided to light one off in the high school ventilation system. I was not implicated since the perpetrator had the good sense not to squeal. My chemistry teacher who had a real good idea as to the source winked at me after the incident. Wouldn't happen like that today. For example, a nearby high school called in the EPA and roped off a school bus and quarantined the students on it when horror of horrors a kid was caught playing with mercury from a broken thermometer! We used to play with it and rub it on pennies in our pockets all day. It's stupidity and fear at work well out of proportion with reality. Let kids be kids.
Finny, I absolutely agree with Post #96, Thank You....