As if more evidence were needed that the public school system is dysfunctional beyond belief, I read that two school boys were suspended for pretending pencils were guns:
Media outlets report the 7-year-old boys were suspended for two days for a violation of the Suffolk school system’s zero-tolerance policy on weapons. They were playing with one another in class Friday at Driver Elementary.
“When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,’” said Paul Marshall, one of the boys’ fathers. “It’s as simple as that.”
Marshall, a former Marine, said he believes school officials overreacted.
But Suffolk Public Schools spokeswoman Bethanne Bradshaw said a pencil is considered a weapon when it’s pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made.
“Some children would consider it threatening, who are scared about shootings in schools or shootings in the community,” Bradshaw said. “Kids don’t think about ‘Cowboys and Indians’ anymore, they think about drive-by shootings and murders and everything they see on television news every day.”
Bradshaw said the policy has been in place for at least two decades. It also bans drawing a picture of a gun and pointing a finger in a threatening manner.
Via Amy Alkon, who calls the educrats “drooling morons.” (Very funny, although I think drooling morons might do a better job of running the schools than these brainless apparatchiks.)
No doubt it will soon be a crime to say “BANG BANG!”
Comments
9 responses to “Drop that pencil now or we’re calling in the SWAT Team!”
“No doubt it will soon be a crime to say “BANG BANG!””
Betcha anything it already is somewhere.
Once is abject stupidity, twice is coincidence, three is a pattern. This sort of intismidation is happening all too frequently. I am convinced that the teacher unions have sent a memo to all its members exhorting them to make an issue out of any kind of “gun” incident. The motive is to mold the young minds in such a way that any mention or display of any item which can be construed to be a gun or facsimile is abhorrent. It will make all the children absolutely fearful of guns and really fearful of consequences of even thinking of guns. The liberals know what they are doing. They have no care that they are destroying the children in their charge. Ttey have an agenda. It is being followed.
I get the feeling some people are decanted from a giant beaker at maturity with no knowledge of children what-so-ever. Having no knowledge they thus can have no bias regarding the topic, and so can be better trusted with the subjects.
Donald-
Precisely. The point is not to protect children who associate firearms with uncontrolled violence. It is to train children to associate firearms with uncontrolled violence.
I can say no more than Thomas Jefferson:-
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
and:-
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
@Steve Brown – that first quote is far less known than the second. And it should be far more known.
(Because, if A, we don’t need to worry about B.)
No government bent on protecting liberty would ban weapons people can use for self-defense (I phrased that one that way because there have been local efforts – worldwide – to ban knives/swords/slingshots…and probably baseball bats and frying pans.
OMG you can use it as a weapon – MUST BAN!
Read a story long time ago (can’t find it anymore) about someone in a store who threw a loaf of BREAD and distracted a potential killer long enough that he could be subdued.
BAN BREAD! Sigh.
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any evidence Jefferson ever said either of those things.
http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/When_governments_fear_the_people,_there_is_liberty…%28Quotation%29
http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/strongest-reason-people-to-retain-right-to-keep-and-bear-arms-quotation
To paraphrase Richard Mitchell’s remarks on anti-intellectualism, hoplophobia only begins with the hating of guns. From there it goes on to the ferreting out of hitherto-unsuspected manifestations of weaponry.
it seems fair to estimate they are doing this to inspire such a gut level fear of guns in the next generation that gun control will become easy. Remember Holder wanted to brainwash the people the same way they did about with cigarettes? It would not be bad, every time we read one of these reports, to teach a kid to shoot, hunt, etc. Overreactions should have consequences appropriate to their nature.