Boy who found lighter suspended from NJ school

ap ^ | September 23, 2010

[JoeProBono]

JAMESBURG, N.J. (AP) -- Officials suspended a fifth-grader in New Jersey who found a lighter on his way to school.

Jamesburg school superintendent Gail Verona told The Home News Tribune of East Brunswick the lighter had the potential to compromise student safety.

But the 11-year-old boy's father questioned why school officials consider the lighter a weapon.

[swarthyguy]

>Have we arrived at zero tolerance for common sense now?

WHERE have you been? ;>

[4yearlurker]

Sticks are every parents worry. But don't forget sharpened pencils,pens without caps and forks from the cafeteria. At least there is one more illegal lighter off the streets!

[swarthyguy]

One game we played was to take a matchbox, put a match under a thumbnail, point the box at another boy standing a couple of feet away with a similar setup and then mimic a gunfighter’s draw, sparking the matchhead with the thumbnail and directing it in the direction of the other boy.

Half the time you just ended up with a scalded, slightly burnt thumb.

[swarthyguy]

>>potential for something to go wrong is lazy and pedantic.

It’s the guiding principle in America now.

[4yearlurker]

Around 1968 I was in 6th grade attending Blackwood Terrace Elementary school in Southern N.J. I remember the huge oak trees that bordered the school playground would drop big,shinny,green acorns. A group of us guys had small pocket knives and we would carve pipes,(for make believe smoking)and whistles out of the acorns. Just fold up your knife and put it back in your pocket before you went back inside from recess. Never a problem!

[Mears]

Another cop basher,I see.

[GlockThe Vote]

Most likely. Most cops, and I know many, are as bad as the crimials they claim to try to protect us from.

[Boogieman]

“But don’t forget sharpened pencils...”

A kid at my school actually stabbed another kid in the neck/shoulder area with a pencil one time. Quite a few “lead poisoning” jokes were thrown about.

[Kenny Bunk]

I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that you are all treating this so lightly. This incredibly dangerous fire starter is the gateway device for many arsonists. While I normally do not hold with the death penalty for pre-teens, but in the case of this young would-be Nero, perhaps an example should be ma...... ............

OTOH, perhaps heavy doses of ritalin and ballet lessons might work? The parents of this wayward ute are just the type to allow a boy to carry a pocket knife, and also need citizenship counseling. Boy o Boy, Obama took over just in time!

[Mears]

Looks to me like you’ve been hanging out with the wrong cops.

[libertarian27]

[mware]

I was a kid of the late 50s and early 60's.

I remember when they banned marbles on the playground.

We played a version that required digging a small hole in the dirt.

Not seeing one of the many holes in the playground, one of the teachers tripped and broke her ankle. That ended that particular version of the game.

[OneWingedShark]

>>Clearly sticks are a most heinous violation of our precious zero-tolerance policies and must be expunged from our schools forthwith!
>
>I beg to differ, I think the real threat to our society are magnifying glasses and the young men who use them to concentrate the energy of the sun.

To make it even more enjoyable you volunteer for cleaning up trash on the school grounds taking all the Styrofoam and placing it in a separate bag from all the other trash; then you take about a pint of gasoline and dissolve as much of that Styrofoam into it as possible (it’ll make a REALLY thick goo) and then use the magnifying-glass or stick on it.

;)

[Gilbo_3]

Gov Christie need to give him a pardon...that would frost some lib muffins...8^}

[Still Thinking]

Last week my 11th grade son in government school asked to borrow my grill lighter. His Chemistry teacher asked the students in the AP class to each bring in a lighter for a lab because the school could not afford it due to budget cuts. I asked him if he will get in trouble for bringing a banned item to school; his response was the teacher told them to be sure to hide it so they don’t get into trouble...

The morons are eating their own. [facepalm]

[Still Thinking]

I am working on a pencil sharpener that rounds off the tip of the pencil so it won’t be so sharp. I am sure I can cell it to the schools.

A pencil UN-sharpener! Brilliant! I guarantee you can get a government contract.

[Still Thinking]

To make it even more enjoyable you volunteer for cleaning up trash on the school grounds taking all the Styrofoam and placing it in a separate bag from all the other trash; then you take about a pint of gasoline and dissolve as much of that Styrofoam into it as possible (it’ll make a REALLY thick goo) and then use the magnifying-glass or stick on it.

Home made napalm! Cool!

[The Theophilus]

We would dissolve the zinc in Muriatic acid to produce hydrogen gas which we would capture in balloons.

Too bad you didn't learn the glories of taking industrial plastic trash bags, taping them together to make a much larger balloon and then filling them with mixtures of natural gas and hydrogen.

My personal favorite recipe for hydrogen was throwing a bunch of galvanized nails into a bucket of swimming pool acid and capturing the discharge in one of the trashbags. Instead of string, we used canon fuse. And for extra fun, we hung sheets of aluminum foil from the balloon to screw with the airport radar. One particularly good explosion/fire-ball actually got the local LEOs out.

[this_ol_patriot]

I still remember the day I took a whole roll of caps and whacked them with a hammer.

[cycjec]

Don’t leave those hydrogenation experiments running
over the weekend when they were supposed to end after
one day. And to all graduate students, photocopy those
dissertion data notebooks and keep the copies offsite.
Offsite backups. OFFSITE, got it? Same goes for anyone
doing research outside of formal education. Remember
Victor Deeb.