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When you have teachers who don't want to "break the rules" and who also support zero-tolerance policies (e.g., a water pistol is a "weapon"; a peck on the cheek is "rape"); and administrators and principals who want to keep their jobs and also avoid civil lawsuits against them; and elected prosecutors who demonstrate their "get tough" profile by calling Mommy's pinking shears "a deadly weapon" and two Flintstones vitamin pills "a potentially deadly threat to our children", then you have created a system that not only encourage but **demands** the litigious assault against not merely minors (under 18), but little children of 8, 10, and 14 years old.

There are two problems here.

The first is school teachers and officials who are largely terrified of their own students, mainly because the have no legal right or ability to control those students in a civilized or rational manner (e.g., suspension, expulsion, etc.).

And the precipitating cause of all of this is a judicial system that is infested with judges who legislate from the bench, and who impose a whimsical and arbitrary system of justice that absolutely mocks cultural norms of behavior and subverts the ruole of law.

I am by no means supporting the reprehensible cowardice of teachers and administrators when they participate in prosecuting 9 and 11 year old children for someting that would have meant a note to Mommy and Daddy 25 years ago.

But I am saying that teachers, administrators, prosecutors, and communities have created an irrational and hysterical system full of unintended consequences, the most horrific of which is that little children from 7 to 13 years old can and do become felons for having a plastic picnic knife in their lunchbox.

This is entirely the fault and responsibilty of communities, who do have the power to change the rules. And if they instead choose to offload their civic responsibilities to such a twisted system of injustice, they deserve everything they get. Unfortunately it is their children who will pay the price.

Last year, my wife was called in to the school.

The problem? My 9 yr old daughter had licked her fingers and chased the boys on the playground. Asked why, she replied, “I wanted to cause pandemonium, and I did.”

The school recommended psychiatric counseling. (One of the teachers, in private, told her, “Sounds like what I did when I was 9 years old.”) My wife decided on home schooling.