Posted on 09/08/2013 4:50:50 PM PDT by markomalley
A sixth-grader in Calvert County was suspended for forming his hand into a gun on his bus ride to school, an incident that adds to a string of recent high-profile cases involving punishments for children who gesture with imaginary weapons.
Carin Read, mother of the 11-year-old student at Mill Creek Middle School in Lusby, filed an appeal of the suspension late last week, after a principal denied her request to remove the alleged infraction from her son’s school records.
The boy had already served a day-long in-school suspension, and Read argued that he should not have a permanent record over the matter. His disciplinary referral alleged that he pretended to shoot another student on the bus.
“There was no threat,” Read said, describing her son as an honor student who has never been in trouble at school. “He’s been punished enough.”
A Calvert schools spokeswoman, Gail Bennett, said she could not comment on the case because student discipline matters are protected by confidentiality laws. The Washington Post generally does not identify minors accused of disciplinary infractions.
The case is one in a growing number involving students suspended from school for pointing their fingers like guns, talking about guns and carrying toy guns. In Anne Arundel County, a 7-year-old boy was suspended after chewing his Pop-Tart-like breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun. In both Montgomery and Prince William counties, young boys were suspended for pretending to shoot with their fingers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This type of zero tolerance is obnoxious, especially when the three black students who could have killed the younger white boy in the schoolbus beating got merely a couple of years probation.
Government school is child abuse.
We seem to have a chicken society here today. Atrocities with guns grab the screaming headlines and the silver screens. Defensive uses get the quiet treatment.
To be fair though... To gesture like you are going to kill doesn’t matter as to exactly how the killing would be carried out. Gesturing like a guillotine or a stabbing would be on a par. It ought to get looked into if the context is not immediately clear, and if appropriate reprimanded, reminding explicitly whoever did it that life isn’t cheap. But maybe it was just some kid reporting on what happened in a horror movie. Kids often do things like that without being malicious. Context matters so, so much.
"But, Teacher, I didn't even put my foot on the desk!"
For the love of God are you serious or did your attempt at humor just fail me? This emasculation of male children has to stop. When I was in school we played Cowboys and Indians and Army on the playground, when we got home it was more of the same. If someone gestures like a gun or a guillotine should be looked into? Sounds an awful lot like that it takes a village B.S. I guess children should just be little robots and never use their imagination, that will sure help future generations to think outside of the box and develop new concepts.
‘Hey preacher—leave those kids alone!’
What is the story behind the picture?
For something to happen does not equate to a moral justification (or condemnation) of it. We need a larger frame of reference.
My reference is the bible and to what honors God. Now if it really DOES honor God to gesture at someone as though to kill them, then by all means do it... but the Christ who said don’t fantasize about sex with that strange woman because that’s tantamount to adultery might have something similar to suggest here? Not that it’s unforgivable (sincerely confess to God and get forgiven, very quick) but that we should seek to have a higher view of what God created and called the world for?
Don’t idolize culture even that of a less guilty age. Culture is a lousy idol. However it is a wonderful servant.
Aww don’t worry about that pesky God! We’ll toss Him away after we’ve used the “best of His suggestions” (human determined) to build our own world!
Ramirez Editorial Cartoons > > > > >
RAMIREZ
In his latest Ramirez covers:
The Entitlement Nation
Also... consensual role play (let’s play cowboy and outlaw) whatever the spiritual reflection (and the cowboy can serve as an excellent metaphor for a lot of wholesome spiritual things — but sometimes the Indian might too... there’s a reason the Boy Scouts honor the Indians) is a little different than doing what kids KNOW is annoying. Some discretion is needed. I’m not propounding any ironclad, robotic “zero tolerance” rule. The spirit means so much.
Uh, whut? Sorry, I nodded off revrund.
Cowboys and Injuns?
There is not supposed to be a special class of Christians seeking to be pure minded and they are the clergy, while everyone else is a stranger to those ivory palaces.
I am very much a lay person. But, I do not lay down for the devil no matter how nice or innocent seeming his game gets. Nor do I undersell heaven! Anything hell claims it can do, outside of sin, heaven can do infinitely better!
We talk of purity like it was some necessary bane. And then we religiously change the oil and filter in our cars... to keep the insides of the engines pure. Let’s stop and think... purity does not mean being wimpy....
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