Posted on 10/12/2009 5:54:24 AM PDT by reaganaut1
NEWARK, Del. — Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé by his side to vouch for him.
Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.
“It just seems unfair,” Zachary said, pausing as he practiced writing lower-case letters with his mother, who is home-schooling him while the family tries to overturn his punishment.
Spurred in part by the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings, many school districts around the country adopted zero-tolerance policies on the possession of weapons on school grounds. More recently, there has been growing debate over whether the policies have gone too far.
...
Education experts say that zero-tolerance policies initially allowed authorities more leeway in punishing students, but were applied in a discriminatory fashion. Many studies indicate that African-Americans were several times more likely to be suspended or expelled than other students for the same offenses.
“The result of those studies is that more school districts have removed discretion in applying the disciplinary policies to avoid criticism of being biased,” said Ronnie Casella, an associate professor of education at Central Connecticut State University who has written about school violence. He added that there is no evidence that zero-tolerance policies make schools safer.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Adding to my last comment: My own child was pushed out of preschool by the school principal. That’s why we started homeschooling. Otherwise, we would’ve never considered it. So, in a way, that piece of scum principal did us a favor.
FTR, my son was a nice boy; he still is. Long story. I’ll be telling more below to someone else.
It is unfortunately the case that a great number of people in positions of authority have their heads stuck so far and so firmly up their butts that they’ll never get them out. This is a perfect example.
Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. Connection??
However, I was in public schools from 1944 - 1960 and they taught American patriotism and Christian values as well as the three Rs, American and World history, etc. It wasn't until later, around the early '60s IIRC, that things started changing.
Bingo. It's all about job security. If another child were hurt by the knife - even ACCIDENTALLY - people would complain that the school should've taken the knife away. So, even though I homeschool and have had my own dealings with the school system that were negative, I understand why the policy of "no knives" is in place.
Meanwhile, even a pencil or pen could be used as a weapon. But, if another child were hurt with a pencil or pen, people would never think to ban pencils and pens from school. (Though I wouldn't rule it out in the future.) But, an accident with a "knife" - even just a pocketknife - elicits a whole different response. So, I could understand the school taking a pocketknife away from a child, for example.
STILL, 45 days in reform school for a six year old bringing a spork to school is utterly ridiculous.
You were being taught by people who were the age of my parents. These people still had parents and grandparents who literally lived the pioneer experience of hacking a civilization out of the wilderness. The goal of the earliest education activists in the mid-1800s ( and other education leaders of the early 20th century until Bill Ayer, today) was to eliminate this influence. They have and are succeeding.
Then there is the socialist object lesson that **all** children who have from the very beginning of government schools have experienced. ALL children who have ever attended government schools learn ( simply by attending) that government has the power to take from the neighbor to pay for a service their parents want for FREE!
If children are trained to be comfortable with taking money from their neighbor for education, then why not social security, health care, prescription drugs, New Deals, Great Societies, college tuition, free transportation, ...even free entertainment?
The liberal/feminist goal is to squash every size of male that has potential and give them a permanent record for their future.
I can’t read the rest of the article because I refuse to sign up for the NYT. But, it makes sense to me that a school cannot take a knife from one 6yo child but let another keep one. If nothing else, that would cause trouble between the students themselves.
45 days for a 6yo with a pocketknife is ABSURD. But, I could understand if the school had merely taken it away and held it aside for him.
But, this school did this child a favor. The mother should continue homeschooling. We started homeschooling when the local public school kicked our eldest child at age 4 out of its optional preschool program. He always was a good boy - the teacher’s pet, in fact. But, he was sick for a week, and our car had broken down, so I couldn’t bring him everyday. The principal threatened me with truancy charges if I didn’t remove him from the program.
Obviously, the school didn’t have a zero tolerance policy because another parent with a child in the same class told me her child had missed even more days, and she said she knew a lot of parents who didn’t take their children to preschool everyday. She said, “It’s OPTIONAL.” But, she also said she was active in the PTA and the principal would’ve never tried that with her. She said, “There are a lot of politics going on at the school.”
So, I can understand the reasons behind “zero tolerance” policies. If what one child does is an “infraction”, other children doing the same thing should receive the same “penalties” if there are any. But, again, this particular penalty - 45 days for ANY 6yo child - is ridiculous. I don’t care what kind of family the child is from. Even a 6yo child living with a neglectful, abusive, drug addicted parent shouldn’t be sentenced to reform school, either; instead, he should be placed with a good family, if the situation is that bad.
She was not amused, but the rest of the table howled in laughter.
I don’t think so. I get the feeling the only district school he’s welcome at until he’s completed 45 days there is the “reform school”, and that she’s homeschooling him as a way of temporarily withdrawing him from the district entirely until she gets the reform school edict reversed.
I remember when I was in junior high school, around 1950, their was contest to sell magazines. I sold enough to get a hunting knife which I received at school. I carried it around school all day and showed it off to my buddies. No problems from anybody including teachers.
That was my impression, too. I hope the parents decide to continue homeschooling.
We had no intentions of homeschooling, either, before we had a negative experience with the public school. I hope this will be this family’s wake up call.
Is this a spork control law or a slap at the homophobic Boy Scouts?
She tried going back to regular school in seventh grade. She'd been out of public school for long enough that they gave her placement tests to see what level classes to put her in and she did above average in all areas and aced about half of them. So then she goes to the school and every day they have to get each teacher to sign some log they have to certify they at least tried each problem on the homework. If not, they got detention. Often the teacher was so busy, it was difficult to get her to sign. If it was forgotten or she never had time during the class, detention. They had to grade each others papers and if they used the wrong color pen, detention.
It was like they were TRYING to frustrate the kids, especially the intelligent creative ones. I'm sure they would discipline a kid that stood up and called the teacher a "MFing whore bitch" or something, but I'm sure the punishment would have been...detention. So the upshot is that the school is saying that kind of blatant anti-social disrespectful outburst is morally equivalent to grading in the wrong color pen or having a teacher too busy to sign your book. Morons. She never went back to conventional public school.
Heh - at least you were able to refrain from informing her that you still had your ‘gun’. :-)
Zero tolerance simply means, I am the government and I cannot ever think rationally for fear I will offend some minority, because he thinks he is being treated differently. So there you have it, a punk brings a switchblade to school, and I punish him. So to be fair to the punk, I must say all knives are bad, even the ones that are not and punish everyone else. Now that is fairness isn’t it? I am the government and I understand fairness, you are too stupid to.
When I was in high school in the sixties, I was taking a speech class that required us to do a speech using visual aids. One of the guys decided to do his speech on his shotgun. Nobody batted an eye or cared at all.
All is not hopeless. Last spring my daughter’s middle school put on the musical Oklahoma—guns and all.
“Still, some school administrators argue that it is DIFFICULT to distinguish innocent pranks and mistakes from more serious threats, and that the policies must be strict to protect students.”
This says it all right here! Zero tolerance requires zero common sense.
I'm with the school on this one...that kid could turn out to be a cereal killer!
Like scissors which the schools have in every classroom. LOL!
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