-By Warner Todd Huston
The geniuses in the State of New York educational establishment have made schools safe from gun wielding crazies once again by persecuting an evil child who waved a gun in class. What kind of super dangerous gun did the boy have? A one-inch-long Lego toy, naturally.
This is, of course, more stupidity sponsored by one of those pointless “zero tolerance” policies that holds that any “weapon” in class is grounds for severe prosecution of the student violating the policy.
In this case, an 8-year-old boy at an upstate New York grade school was persecuted by officials for wielding the tiny piece of plastic shaped like a gun used for characters in the Lego line of toys. Officials claimed the boy threatened to “shoot” his classmates… with a one-inch-long piece of plastic.
The boy’s “teacher” called both the school principal and the social worker because of this dangerous, dangerous gun.
After the “incident” occurred, the boy’s parents were notified that their son was threatening his classmates with a gun and parents ran to the school fearing the worst. Of course, when they got to the school and found out that their son was being persecuted because of a tiny piece of plastic, they were outraged–as well they should be.
But before the full facts were known, the school sent a very misleading email to the father of the boy to alert him to the “crime” his son committed.
Rusty Weiss of Mental Recession has the text of the email:
Shortly after 9 AM on Friday morning a female student, one that is very good friends with (student), reported to (teacher) that (student) pointed a Lego gun at her and stated “I will shoot you.” (Teacher) then contacted (Social Worker), who reported to the classroom and asked to speak to (student). His response was to cover his ears and refused to speak with her. (Student) had a plastic bottle with pennies in it and began banging it on the desk. (Social Worker) asked for the bottle and (student) refused. I was called to the room. I spoke directly with the female student and she shared with me what happened. She stated she was sad that he had said that to her and that she believed he no longer wanted be her friend.
(The child’s name has been redacted to protect his identity)
The father’s return message to the school after he found out the facts is a classic.
Am I reading this correctly? A teacher with dozens of yeas of experience felt it necessary to secretly notify the social worker because an 8-year-old said I’m going to shoot you with a Lego gun?
That is shocking to say the least. If the teacher and staff can’t tell an 8-year-old to nit use Lego toys, or tell him ‘we don’t say things like that’ and then move on, without making a federal case of the matter, then your ability as educators has to be called into play. Honestly based on this story, I’m not sure who would put you people in charge of tying your own shoes, let alone in charge of children.
On a side note, after I read the first sentence and realized the what triviality occurred to set things in motion, I used “planned ignoring” on the rest of the story.
(My son) spent his day working as a reminder for why he was kept home, but your teacher’s decisions, or rather, “choices” are beyond lacking judgment, and are the reason that the situation blew up entirely instead of being resolved in minutes.
This is yet one more example of teachers desperate to avoid making any sort of grown up decisions on their own but instead relying on illogical “rules” that absolve the teachers and their bosses from having to act like adults and make adult decisions.
Any teacher or administrator who invokes the so-called zero tolerance policy should be fired.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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