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 ...
That's because the whole "disarmn the criminals" (ex-cons used to have their 2nd Amendment rights restored) was really just a ploy to weaken everyone's rights in order to take them away.
How hard a guess would it have been to figure out that the habitual criminal wouldn't obey the lawy and get his hands on guns, while the guy who wants to go straight (or who just made a mistake) would stay away?
And gee, the disarming wasn't just of those who'd used guns in committing their crime, or of violent offenders in general, but of all ex-cons. What's the reasoning behind that?
And since it was obviously going to be a problem to keep guns out of habitual criminals' hands, that meant there were going to have to be ever more draconian measures leveled against the average citizen.
To the point where the only ones who have guns are the habitual criminals.
Now I may have exaggerated the planning behind this, but surely the path forward could have been rather easily seen.
But the public buys it all, even today, hook, line and sinker, and so we have to pay the price for our collective stupidity.
Look to what's being done to the hated and despised to see where your own rights are being eroded.
A winner every single time for the self-styled elites who want to own you: "When they came for...., I did nothing, for I was not..."
America -- a great idea, didn't last.
It does sound like they were trying to frustrate your daughter and the other students. Good thing you decided to homeschool again. :-)
I know a woman whose shy, quiet daughter was assaulted in middle school by another student (a boy). She never saw it coming; he attacked her from behind. When asked why, he said he “just felt like it.” The principal didn’t want to involve the police, so the parents called the police. One of the parents worked at the school, and the principal was mad at them for calling the police. It was crazy. If anyone should be punished, a student who assaults another that way should be punished. I don’t know if the boy ever was disciplined.
When they pulled their daughter out to homeschool, the teachers were mad at them. Go figure. The mother came to our homeschool meetings and, of course, there were a bunch of us there who’d had bad experiences with schools. ;-) There also were some former teachers homeschooling their own children. One woman’s son was ill and had learning disabilities, and he’d been assaulted at school again and again. The kids assaulting other kids are the ones who need punishment. Not the kids using the wrong color pens or whose teachers were too busy to sign their work!
I'd be OK with that so long as the punishment is simulated instead of real, too.
No doubt. Now she's well adjusted, hard working and organized, and still as smart and creative as ever. No way she'd fit in there. ;-)
"You punch in at 8:30 every morning, except you punch in at 7:30 following a business holiday, unless it's a Monday, then you punch in at 8 o'clock. Punch in late and they dock you. Incoming articles get a voucher, outgoing articles provide a voucher. Move any article without a voucher and they dock you. Letter size a green voucher, oversize a yellow voucher, parcel size a maroon voucher. Wrong color voucher and they dock you! 6787049A/6. That is your employee number. It will not be repeated! Without your employee number you cannot get your paycheck. Inter-office mail is code 37, intra-office mail 37-3, outside mail is 3-37. Code it wrong and they dock you! This has been your orientation. Is there anything you do not understand, is there anything you understand only partially? If you have not been fully oriented, you must file a complaint with personnel. File a faulty complaint and they dock you!"
[spoken at about 160 words per minute]
LOL. I never saw that movie, but based on that one scene, yes, it does sound like your daughter was trapped in the educational version of that fictional company. ;-) Good thing she escaped. Too bad for the other students, though. I wonder if any of them now have an obsession with pen ink colors, or if they’re rebelling now by using different colors of ink. ;-)
“That’s because the whole ‘disarmn the criminals’ (ex-cons used to have their 2nd Amendment rights restored) was really just a ploy to weaken everyone’s rights in order to take them away.”
Ya think? Of course it is. Anything that infringes upon our personal and property rights is un-Constitutional. That’s why the LibTards have worked so hard for 50 yers to capture the education system, the courts, the media, etc.
They’re evil. And they’re patient.
I saw that show. Prisoners are really resourceful.
Although government schools are funded by tax funds, when I was attending it was from local and state funds. Public schools through high school were funded with property taxes. The federal government played no part, with the possible exception of ROTC where the military provided some equipment, uniforms, and military instructors. Although the state colleges and universities were usually larger, most colleges and universities were sponsored and funded by churches, foundations and tuition.
The problem intensified with the creation of the Department of Education and the infusion of federal funds into schools for school lunch programs. That was the jumping off point for many other federally funded programs. Any school receiving funds for school lunches had to accept federal “assistance” for the other intrusions or lose their entire federal funding.
Actually he isn’t old enough to even be a Cub Scout ( let alone a Boy Scout). At six he would be a Tiger Scout.
The principal of the school is named Denise Schwartz.
If they don't work, then there is another reason for this railroading. My guess is that school administrators own stock in the alternative schools and get money per head.
Can't fix stupid, eh?
It has always been interesting to me that the best plan that enlightened, progressive, highly educated educators could come up with was “zero tolerance” ...
The school board ALMOST got hounded into sanity. They held an emergency meeting in which they changed the mandatory “weapons” punishment for kindergarteners and first graders to a mere 3-5 day suspension instead of 45 (apparently 2nd graders and up still get 45 days for bringing ordinary eating utensils to school).
If I was the kid’s mother, I’d be inclined to pick up a sharp pencil and forcefully stab the nearest board member who failed to speak up for eliminating the mandatory suspension entirely. Some things are worth going to jail for. She’s got the national media focused on this — perfect time to make the “point” that under this idiotic rule pencils and pens also need to be classified as “weapons”.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,565640,00.html
Nam Vet
...or get into a quick game of ‘mumbly peg’ with it at recess or lunch!
I remember that so well!!
Celebrate diversity while we are being dragged down to the lowest common denominator.
The administration should all get as much scorn and embarassment the public can heap on them for their paranoid schizophrenic idiocy. They have totally lost their perspective, and are unfit to educate anybody.
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