Posted on 12/13/2004 7:34:38 AM PST by Pikamax
Pencil sharpeners banned after attack
WEAPON: A pencil sharpener blade
PENCIL sharpeners have been banned from a primary school after a pupil dismantled one and used the blade to slash another child's neck.
The victim was attacked in the playground at Waterloo Primary School in Ashton under Lyne.
He was taken to Tameside Hospital where he had butterfly stitches placed on the wound.
The attacker was suspended for two days and is now back in school.
Police, who were notified two days later, have spoken to the young attacker and his parents.
Headteacher David Willis has now banned all pencil sharpeners.
But the decision to allow the boy to return to school has angered parents. Some have signed a petition calling on the school to permanently expel the youngster.
One parent, who did not wish to be named, said: "Are our children safe when we send them through those gates every morning? The lad purposely took the blade out of the sharpener. In my eyes that is a pre-meditated attack.
Appropriate
"My children know the difference between right and wrong. To suspend that boy for just two days is no punishment at all."
Tracy Buckley, the school's head of governors, has written to all parents, saying the school understood the gravity of the incident and acted accordingly.
The letter states: "The school, like every other school, has a duty to promote `inclusion' of all pupils. The emphasis of the (DfES) guidance is that a permanent exclusion is discouraged and to be considered as a last resort in very extreme circumstances. A fixed period exclusion was entirely appropriate for the circumstances."
A spokeswoman for Tameside council said it supported the action taken by the school, which she said was appropriate.
"The school took the incident very seriously and the governors, headteacher and staff are committed to providing a safe and secure environment for all pupils."
The attack is highlighted just over a week after 15-year-old David Sandham died following an altercation at Broadoak High School in Partington, Trafford.
Yesterday, the Manchester Evening News reported how teachers at Priestnall High School in Stockport started acting as bodyguards, patrolling streets round their school, following attacks on five pupils.
I think I just threw up a little after reading the following:
"The letter states: "The school, like every other school, has a duty to promote `inclusion' of all pupils. The emphasis of the (DfES) guidance is that a permanent exclusion is discouraged and to be considered as a last resort in very extreme circumstances. A fixed period exclusion was entirely appropriate for the circumstances.""
Well, those little sharpeners do have a razor blade inside them that is pretty sharp. But if the stupid kid had been thinking, he would have used a sharp pencil instead. This would have been easier than taking the sharpener apart.
It also would have earned him the enduring love and affection of all students, even the kid he stabbed, since the stupid principal would have banned all pencils (and probably pens, too).
Good to see that there is at least some clear thinking going on.
"The emphasis of the (DfES) guidance is that a permanent exclusion is discouraged and to be considered as a last resort in very extreme circumstances."
And slashing another kid with a blade is NOT an 'extreme circumstance'?
These people are nuts!
You took the words out of my mouth. Somebody stab somebody with a pencil, quick!
Egggggggggggggactly.
Whenever I read stuff like this I hear a nagging voice in my head telling me that there might be more to the story. The only way I could, maybe, understand is if the kid that was stabbed was beating the other kid to death on a daily basis and the kid was simply defending himself (preemptively).
Yet, they will have their computers linked to big brother, by which they can echo assurances to each other and big brother, that all is well ... in between eating a bite or two, with their hands.
The lengths that "civilized" people will go to, in order to become socialistically-domesticated voters "in a democracy," in order to refuse their duties of human responsible agency, that is, in order to avoid individual responsibilities.
That the people are sovereign, they fear, because, again, that requires individual responsibility.
The lesson is, that the yellow paint stripe down the middle of the street, does not protect you from oncoming traffic.
The lesson is, that the badge on a police officer, does not protect you from his arsenal of assault weapons.
The lesson is, that no government license, protects you.
You, protect you, and your family and neighbors and community, because you have the resolve to enforce the laws which you make lawfully, and you limit government to only having the powers that are enumerated on the agreement of goverment function and organization, in our case, in the U.S.A., our Constitution.
As tragic, as are stabbings and shootings and beheadings and rape and robbery and other mayhem ... the most dangerous aspect of human existance, is unlimited government, which has killed hundreds of millions of people.
When you give up your duties to be self-disclipined individuals, and you "work at" forcing other people to give up their duties, because you are afraid of being alone with your shame, and you belittle life, liberty, and property with which you bear the responsibilities of independence along with sovereignty over government, you are then accepting your servitude to some form of unlimiting of governent, that is, unleashing government, to do what is not, in a word, civilized.
It must have been ballistic gelatin.
They'll have to go back to sharpening their pencils with their Barlow pocket knives.
How is this not exactly the same as putting the gun in jail and letting the murderer walk free?
The pencil sharpener wasn't the problem, it was the little psycho that tried to slash a fellow student. This future serial killer needs to be taken from a normal school and institutionalized to protect society. Any grade school kid who would go to such pains to viciously attack another student has a serious mental problem.
Good L-rd. American schools now have more in common with prisons than anything else.
Students are now 'shanking' one another.
This type of thing is just nuts. If you want to protect your kids, homeschool them !!! Schools, public or private, are not healthy places to be, mentally or physically.
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