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 ...
And if there was a kid who would knife another kid in the eye, I bet they are carrying a knife every day, but concealed so they don’t get caught.
It’s not going to be the spork brought in by the cub scout.
When I was in 6th grade, a couple of the black girls they had bussed into our school for integration got into a fight, and one of them stabbed the other in the shoulder with a metal fork.
Things happen. You can’t really stop them. Remember that when the black kids beat up the white kid on the school bus, they didn’t have weapons, and they still nearly killed the kid.
Looks to me as if she'd prefer a shovel over a fork.
They allow kids to drive to school, but there was just a story where an honor student was getting expelled because he accidentally left a small knife in his car locked in the parking lot.
Of course, he could kill someone with the car a lot easier than he could kill someone with the knife; and he wasn’t going to kill anybody because he was an upstanding eagle scout honor student.
Just the kind of kid we need to punish these days, so the hoodlums don’t feel like they are discriminated against.
Nowadays if you need to build an emergency shelter, you are supposed to call 911 and let the police do it for you. :-)
Just remember — no teacher is going to be fired for reporting a student who has a metal utensil.
But people will lose their jobs if a kid kills another kid.
So all the incentives are to adopt MORE of these policies, to keep people safe in their jobs.
It’s the same reason child protective services almost always take kids away from loving parents and put them in temporary foster care or group homes. It is bad for the kids, but they won’t get fired for it, while they WILL get fired if they leave one kid with a parent who ends up harming the kid.
“Next banned weapons: Scissors, rocks, and even sharped edge papers.”
And no more games of paper, rock, scissors either!
Add to the mix the appropriate drugs to get the kids in the appropriate passive zombie state. Ban pencils and pens as well, since those could be weapons. No student should have writing instruments more advanced than a jumbo crayon.
Of course this does not apply to certain private schools where the elites send their children. The same elites that oppose school choice for the plebian masses.
This boy is a little Tiger Cub, for heaven's sake!
Honestly, Ayn Rand couldn't think this stuff up. Geeze! And the people who sentenced this 6 year old to 45 days in their school prison will earn 6 figure retirement packages.
I bet, I bet, I bet this little boy is white.
“Good thing he didn’t have a No. 2 pencil. Those are deadly in the right hands. :)”
Certainly can be.
Hopefully, while at the reform school for his 45 days, he will be assigned key chapters to read from some practical, experience-based books like “Prison’s Bloody Iron” by Harold Jenks and Michael Brown, “Put ‘Em Down, Take ‘Em Out!: Knife Fighting Techniques from Folsom Prison” by Don Pentecost, and “Knives, Knife Fighting, & Related Hassles” by Marc MacYoung.
The first author of the first book, BTW, learned most of his knowledge early in his criminal career during a year and a half at the National Training School, the federal reform school in DC.
Good stuff to know WTSHTF. As the Scouts taught me: Be Prepared!
Yes, and for kicking their opponent also. Kicking was "fighting dirty" and frowned upon by most boys. I am not talking about the inner city schools however, that even in the 50s had problems with gangs and violence, although back then kids could quit school at a early age and most gang bangers were not in school.
I grew up in Bell Gardens(in LA, near Compton et al), or at least partially grew up there, and it was bad in the 50s but is worse now. Back then all the mean kids were not in school, they had either been kicked out or quit. You had to deal with them out of school but not while in school.
School officials at that time dealt with violence without fear of retaliation from lawsuits and other such garbage and most parents supported them.
Pocket knives were as plentiful as leaves on trees, every boy had one and I never once saw a knifing or any other weapon used on a kid in school.
Luckily my parents moved us out of their by the time I was 10 and moved up to a great part of CA, the North. Now, even that is being ruined by the liberal fungus which has gotten a foothold on the feet of America and threatens to spread to the whole body.
As a matter of fact I have two spots on my right hand where graphite is still embedded from accidents with newly sharpened #2 pencils about 50 years ago. :-)
Education experts say that zero-tolerance policies initially allowed authorities more leeway in punishing student ... s
There is the problem - Education Experts! How can Zero Tolerance be interpreted as giving more leeway in punishment? Zero tolerance means what it says in the regular world, the opposite in the Orwellian world of the Left.
More unintended consequences? Yeah, right!
>>I’m glad to see that Dolores Umbridge is still able to find work...<<
You absolutely rock to the Highest Order!!!!!
Government schools were **never** in the control of well balanced people. The leadership driving and promoting government education has **always** been leftist!
The first activists and education leaders in the mid-1800s pushing the idea of government schools were radical socialists! The goal then of the leading education intellectuals (those with the real power), was and always has been, to turn Americans into compliant workers for the fascist state. They have succeeded in and are continuing to succeed admirably in that goal!
The only way to do that is to get government **completely** out of education on every level!
It is impossible to have a religiously, culturally, and politically neutral education. Even if school districts were the size of a few city blocks or a suburban subdivision the voting mob would be indoctrinating other people's children with their anointed worldview and using the government to force their neighbor to pay for it.
Also...ALL government schools teach socialism! ALL of them. Just by attending the child learns ( every day) that the government can use the threat of force to take from their neighbor to pay for something their parents want for free. It is my belief that we have the IRS, social security, FDR's New Deal, Johnson's Great Society, etc. precisely because one to three generations of Americans, simply by attending government school every day, had learned to be comfortable taking money from their neighbor.
It amazes me how limited conservatives are when viewing government schools. They consistently fail to see that government schools ARE SOCIALISM! SOCiALSIM CAN NOT BE FIXED!
Yes, I am shouting. I am exasperated with my fellow conservatives that somehow believe that government schools can be reformed if only the unions were eliminated or they were somehow more local. Again! Government schools are socialism. Socialism can not be fixed!
Government schools are **not** broken. They are working **exactly** as planned! If we want reform we must get rid of them and move to a completely private system of universal K-12 education.
I STRONGLY SUPPORT ZERO TOLERANCE OF LIBERALS.
Renegade Cub Scout Alert!
Would this mean that playing ‘paper-rock-scissors’ could be punished because it is simulates prohibited behavior? Just askin’, is all...I’ve got my lawyer hat on this morning.
The school systems are afraid of lawsuits. They are just trying to stop them preemptively. Don’t be so quick to call them stupid. The only thing that I see as stupid is that the schools are put in this position by a court system that will allow these things to happen. An ACLU suit could potentially bankrupt YOUR local school.
well yeah, you could smother a rock with the paper. Both are dangerous!!!
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