Posted on 08/22/2007 12:48:50 PM PDT by redstates4ever
Chandler school officials have suspended a 13-year-old boy for sketching a picture that resembled a gun, saying it posed a threat to classmates.
But parents of the Payne Junior High School student said the drawing was a harmless doodle of a fake laser, and school officials overreacted.
"I just can't believe that there wasn't another way to resolve this," said Paula Mosteller, the boy's mother. "He's so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good."
The Mostellers said the drawing did not show blood, bullets, injuries, or target any human. They said it was just a drawing that resembled a gun.
But Payne Junior High administrators thought the sketch was enough of a threat and gave the boy a five-day suspension, later reduced to three days.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
When I was in the 4th and 5th grade, all of my school notebooks included drawings of Tiger tanks and F-100 Super Saber jets.
The pictures and stories have included guns and even some blood.
At his fifth grade graduation, he said that he wanted to be a Navy SEAL.
Only one teacher has asked him to write on other subjects.
That's expulsion for you, pally!
Eve took the first bite of the apple after being duped by the evil serpent. Adam also ate from the tree, but only after Eve offered it to him.
The schoolmarm boy hating feminazis are the real terrorists.... Not the little boy with the gun drawing.
I live in a rural area and there's a gun/conservation club nearby. There are also a number of pheasant hunting clubs around. But I don't hunt anymore due to health reasons. That's why I gave my arms to the young lad.
It looks like a building (school of all things) with a sidewalk going up to it.
Some people are paranoid.
The eduKKKrats, having spent their entire lives in the company of children and other eduKKKrats, have absolutely no common sense. Therefore, they substitute rigid, monolithic policy for decision making skills.
From the article:
Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the crude sketch was "absolutely considered a threat," and that threatening words or pictures are punishable.
You, Mr. Locke, along with your publik skewl, are a threat. You are a threat to freedom, morality, and common decency. Your hysterical comment is indicative of the stupidity and intellectual laziness that can only come from a lifetime in acedemia.
I hope this kid's family sues you, your fascist publik skewl district, and your fellow eduKKKrats into bankruptcy, and uses the money to liberate their child's mind from the oppression of your idiocy with homeschooling or a private school.
Zero tolerance + zero judgment = zero intelligence
What has happened to the once Conservative State of Arizona? These Leftists have now infiltrated the schools everywhere I guess. We have problems with these ridiculous “No Tolerence” policies even here in Texas.
I’m 31 and I was in high school (junior or senior year, IIRC) when it began happening. I don’t know what the impetus was, as this was LONG before Columbine, but a kid from my class got expelled and arrested for carrying a paintball gun across the parking lot. Prior to this, we brought guns in for the shop teacher (who was a gunsmith) to work on.
Just when you think you’ve heard it all.
I have an idea for a television series, based on “The Twilight Zone” and “The Outer Limits.” Each episode feature a different family, who must face bizarre and disorienting adversities from the public chools their children attend. The unfortunate souls must battle through situations in which logic and reason don’t apply, forcing them to use their wits to escape the unreal world.
I’ll bet such a series could draw quite an audience.
Actually they are not mutually exclusive. “Zero” will always have to be interpreted—that’s exactly what these horror stories are about. No rule ever automatically interprets itself. All rules have to be interpreted. Zero tolerance is a catch phrase for a set of rules about X, Y, Z (guns, sexual harrassment etc.) No matter how loosely written or detailed the rules are, all rules, all laws, have to be interpreted. And that means discretion is being used. When the Oregon school stupidly tries to make felons out of butt-slapping boys they are interpreting, extremely stupidly and undiscerningly, a set of rules. The same goes for punishing this boy for a drawing of a gun. The rules don’t specify whether drawings of guns = guns, I’m sure. Common sense says drawing guns don’t equal guns. A principal with discretion, common sense, would say to the idiot teacher or teacher’s aide or whoever complained about the drawing, “No dear, I’m sorry, the rules should not be intepreted as equating drawings with guns themselves.” Instead, lacking common sense, lacking discretion, the principal or whoever beat up on this kid, interpreted the rules as applying to drawings of guns. Stupid, lunatic — which is exactly what lack of discretion is.
I see from post no. 110 that apparently the “laws” here did include “threatening drawings.” But my point remains the same. Even if there’s “zero” tolerance for threatening drawings, someone will always already have to interpret whether a given drawing is “threatening” or not. So zero tolerance will always involve interpretation. If people did the interpreting with discretion, common sense, we’d be okay. But the problem is stupidity of interpretation. No matter how good a law is (and these zero tolerance laws are not good laws) a fool can interpret and apply it in a harmful, foolish, stupid, dangerous way. But these laws are bad laws, so it’s a double whammy—bad laws and stupid application of them.
In junior High School, centuries ago, it seems like, I was given detention for not making book covers out of paper shopping bags and putting them on my books.
So I did, and decorated them. On one book, I had lovingly drawn a full-page cartoon of the homeroom teacher who gave me detention, kicking and jerking at the end of a rope.
On another, I had him boiling in oil and shreiking.
No one did a damned thing, except laugh.
Today, I would have been expelled and given a lobotomy, and voted Democrat forever after, I suppose.
Or worse, he could have held the picture at arms length and held his entire class hostage.
“P-51’s strafing Panzers was my specialty.”
I always got busted doing it because I just had to supply the sound effects while drawing.
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