Posted on 11/11/2004 8:09:04 PM PST by mark502inf
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Cartwheels and handstands have gotten an 11-year-old girl temporarily bounced out of her Los Angeles-area school.
Deirdre Faegre was suspended for a week after repeatedly disobeying school officials who told her not to perform gymnastic stunts during lunchtime.
"Our first concern is the safety of all children," San Jose-Edison Academy Principal Denise Patton told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
Patton said Deirdre could accidentally strike another student, or injure herself, and other children could get hurt trying to imitate Deirdre, who has been doing gymnastics for five years.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
If they told her not to do, she shouldn't do it.
Period.
When parents begin defending their children for deliberately breaking the rules they are not doing them any favors.
When I was in school we had to wear a belt if our pants had belt loops. It was a goofy rule but it was a rule and there was a penalty for disobeying it.
I can see a danger in a crowded lunchroom if one kid is doing cartwheels. If was eating I wouldn't appreciate it.
How many parents here would discourage their children from doing acrobatics in the kitchen during dinner?
She was probably just excited to get an education...
We used to play "smear the queer" (we didn't know what a queer was). If you are not familiar with the game it involves a football and everyone on the field trying to tackle the one guy who has the football. Great fun!
you got THAT right!
Expected The Onion or Scrappleface...
How else is a kid supposed to swallow that gruel they serve in the cafeteria. lol
I'd have scolded my child too. I hated it when they'd do cartwheels in our teensy little cabin when I was trying to teach grammar. har har
we used to play that too! I still don't know what "smear the queer" is......
I do agree that the girl should have been reprimanded if she repeatedly disobeyed a reasonable request... however, do we know she was attempting these tricks in a crowded area where there is risk to students? One of the school officials stated others may want to try to repeat her actions...
If she was performing the gymnastics stunts during recess and in an appropriate area and was behaving in a responsible manner in regards to others around her - then perhaps the school administrators requests were unreasonable and perhaps we should be commending the girl for her spirit and conviction instead...
Heck I don't know - I just can't believe this is even an issue...
Well, I still think the underlying problem here is a child that feels she doesn't have to obey and a parent that supports her.
Another PC insanity! What has this world come to??????? Makes me wish that we need death squads to get rid of the PC CommuNazis vermins.
There's nothing worse than a bunch of power hungry mid level bureaucrats - and school administrators are oftentimes among the worst of them.
The exact same thing happened to the child of a friend of mine who was into skeet shooting. Damned public school authorities!
BTW - I got 3 days once for losing my temper, crumpling up a detention slip saying "F@#k this" too loud indirectly at a teacher in response to a BS detention. If I wasn't 18(and near graduation) at the time, I would have gotten grounded bigtime from my parents for that.
Doing gymnastics is twice as worse than that....riiiiiiight.
Ah ... er ... I hope you didn't teach English or spelling. The kids didn't "preform," they "PERformed."
The rules of basketball prohibit that kind of motion on the court? Huh. I'd have challenged them to try to shoot the hoop, using their feet.
Yep. Told repeatedly to stop. My kid would also be in the doghouse for disobeying.
We had "bull in the ring" in football. Very Roman!
As far as "smear the queer" we didn't play that one and we didn't know what a queers were either.
It's deplorable to see how many kids today have lost their innocents to selfish people with a subhuman agenda.
Totally agree with you. I just don't see how it's PC to expect a student to obey authority. I'm surprised to read so many comments of that sort on this board of all places. It's about taking personal responsibility. The child was punished for disobeying authority as well as risking the safety of others (whose parents would've no doubt been more than happy to sue if their kids got hit by a flying limb). Eleven years old is old enough to control oneself. So instead of dealing with their child's discipline problem the parents take offense and run whining to the news media. How on earth was this deemed worthy of CNN coverage? How long before the little girl gets her spot on David Letterman or The Tonight Show to talk about her experience?
When I was in school doing gymnastics outside of gym would've been unheard of, not to mention seen as showing off by her peers. If she's been doing gymnastics for 5 years, she obviously has a time and place to practice this and doesn't need to be doing it during lunch. But more to the point it's nonsense to whine about the validity of a rule just because you're now facing the consequences of breaking it. If the parents thought the rule was silly, they should've tried lobbying for change rather than letting their daughter just break it.
I always wonder what'll happen to kids who are raised by parents with this attitude. When they grow up and defy their bosses, will they avoid getting fired with "Oh, come on. It was a ridiculous order anyway. What's the harm?"
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