[libstripper]

When I was in seventh or eighth grade back in the late 1950s, I wrote a whole paper for a history class on the development of Civil War hand guns and rifles. As I remember, I got a “B” in the days when there wasn’t any grade inflation. Now I’d probably be expelled for a year for having written a whole paper filled with “Columbine-style threats.” Disgusting, and this doesn’t even mention the kid’s free speech rights.

[az_illini]

That’s nothing. For my public speaking and rhetoric class (public school, late eighties) I did a presentation on the mechanics of flint lock and percussion cap muzzle loading weapons. As a prop I brought in a bayonet from a Springfield musket. I didn’t bother to tell the teacher about it. I’ll never forget the look on her face when I pulled it out from behind the podium. For a second speech I did a presentation on how to make hydrogen filled balloons from toilet bowel cleaner and aluminum foil. Fortunately the teacher was young and relatively easy going.

I’d be going to school shackled, wearing an orange jump suit, giving presentations on how to brew gin from apple cores if I was born 15 years later than I was.