Posted on 03/19/2013 5:26:13 PM PDT by markomalley
The public education system in Maryland has officially gone off the deep end.
The Old Line State — where kids have been suspended for making guns with their fingers and with toaster pastries — now boasts a school district that prohibits hugging and homemade food in public elementary schools for anyone except a parent’s own children.
Parents must also register to enter the playground and they can’t push anyone except their own kids on the swings.
The Enterprise, a member of Southern Maryland Newspapers, has the story.
Officials with St. Mary’s County Public Schools say the new rules are necessary to provide a generally safe environment.
A committee composed of parents and elementary school principals created the regulations after a handful of meetings last year. Other new rules include a ban on ad-hoc parent-teacher conferences. The distribution of birthday invitations on school grounds is also now verboten.
“We’re not violating anybody’s rights,” Superintendent Michael Martirano told The Enterprise.
“We think it’s the right balance between safety and parental involvement,” Kelly Hall, a school district official, explained to The Enterprise.
“At the same time, parents were expressing some concerns,” Hall added.
“It is sad that it needs to be done for the safety of our children,” parent Sherry Whittles told The Enterprise. Whittles added that she agrees with the new rules.
“I think this is horrible,” school board member Cathy Allen opined to The Enterprise. “Elements of this are going to decrease parent involvement.”
For whatever reason, Maryland has been ground zero for school districts propounding goofy laws lately. Until now, though, those laws seem to have been limited to restricting things that represent guns but aren’t actually anything like real guns.
At Roscoe R. Nix Elementary School in Silver Spring, a six-year-old boy was suspended for making the universal kid sign for a gun, pointing at another student and saying “pow.” (RELATED: Pow! You’re suspended, kid)
A second-grader in Baltimore was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped a strawberry, pre-baked toaster pastry into something resembling a gun. (RELATED: Second-grader suspended for breakfast pastry)
In response to the infamous breakfast pastry incident, a Maryland state senator has crafted a bill to curb the zeal of public school officials who are tempted to suspend students as young as kindergarten for having things — or eating things — that aren’t actually anything like real guns. (RELATED: ‘Toaster Pastry Gun Freedom Act’ proposed in Maryland)
These educational brueaucrats who won't allow kids to be active at recess are probably scratching their heads and wondering why childhood obesity is such a problem.
Oh how I miss the sound of that red dodge ball as it bounced off the head of some poor soul fool enough to pick up one of the loose balls the coach would randomly throw in.
Punch and kickball in the school yard. The after school fight behind the 5 and dime. Ringalevio at night with 50 neighborhood kids, dirt bombs and itchy balls optional.
The bicycle daredevils who set up the ramps and tried to jump garbage cans, at least once a month a limb was broken, or stitches required. Every sport played on concrete, no helmets lest you be called Mary.
We climbed trees, fell out of them and the emergency room at the local hospital knew all the local kids by name. The trauma doctor that coached my baseball team told me to rub dirt on it after a nasty slide ripped my leg open. Then he called me Mary.
In the winter we played sled derby on the snow covered hills, someone always getting cut up or maneuvered into a tree. We went from neighborhood to neighborhood to play football and hockey against other teams.
A broken finger was fixed with hockey tape and an ice cream stick. A bloody nose was stopped by shoving something up your nose, Stitches during games was done by the dad who was the medic while in Korea. (usually my dad)
That’s what being a kid was about.
you can. they'll still keep (and raise) your property taxes
That influx would dramatically affect the county’s demographic, but I’d never have suspected the change would be in this direction. A few decades ago St Mary’s seemed heavily populated with genuine Amish farmers.
Tourist brochures touting St. Mary's County's fruit stands, mom-and-pop eateries, and St.Mary's City, where colonial life is re-enacted make the area look like a bastion of traditional American culture, not wacky political correctness.
if eeveryone would pull them they’d have to lower the school prop tax part, they wouldn’t be able to justify current expenses. buildings would close,’besold, teachers would not be teaching, and let go.
Maryland is one ****ed up state. Its excessive over-regulation rivals that of California.
Sometimes I wish I were a guy so I could whip it out and take a leak when I really have to go and there are no bathrooms in the area (Such as a particular stretch of Interstate 75 to Tampa).
I remember dodgeball....
The kids were ruthless,lol. Head-hunting galore.
just imagine the horror if a pastry-shaper were swinging on a swing with a gun-shaped , home-made chicken finger!
oh that, can't speak for everywhere but in PA, the libs just love to escape the city (read: those yutes and the schools they go to) and move out into the country.
Telling their lib friends how they live out in Amish country and how peaceful it is but driving like lunatics behind the horse and buggy that has the nerve to be in front of them. They get them selves nice and dug in like tics in the local affairs and they next thing you know, having a bonfire is banned.
As is their cancerous way, they move into a new area and proceed to recreate the ruinous cr@phole that they fled.
That was how I knew it, but haven’t been down there in @ 20 years, well before the Navy move.
.
They’d have a new crisis of underfunded pensions and the former teachers would be hired to guard the empty building to make sure copper thieves don’t burn it down.
for the children.
Well, Michelle’s North Korean starvation lunch is supposed to cure that so now kids should be allowed to run at recess if they don’t pass out first.
Retiring overseas is looking more appealing by the day! Idiocy in the U.S. has become mainstream normal.
Thoroughly enjoyed your memories of a time when boys were taught young how to be men. Reminds me of my childhood when me and my dad were fishing at the bay shore. Someone else casting got a triple-hook caught in some poor kid's leg. My. dad pulled out his pocket knife, sterilized the blade over his zippo lighter and then dug the hook out of the kid's leg. Kid grimmaced but didn't cry.
Move to Idaho, there ain’t no trees here by me (you could pee behind) but good chance a man with just a smidge of right would make his give it block the wind.
ping
i keft baltimore and the freak state after college when i joined the army in ‘74 and never moved back nor do i want to. family there so the occassional visit. unfortunatley colorado is turning into commierado, the freak state of the west.
“The distribution of birthday invitations on school grounds is also now verboten.”
I’m betting this one has less to do with “safety” and more to do with the other equally obnoxious trend of “mandatory inclusion”. I dealt with this first-hand in grad school, of all places.
I was informed that we couldn’t have a Christmas, - er, excuse me - “Holiday” office party unless we sent invitations to every department in the building. Otherwise, someone might feel left out.
I’ll lay better than even money that the Maryland schools are taking a similar line, and won’t allow birthday invites on school grounds because it excludes other (i.e. the not invited) students or some such.
There are still Americans that pee in their back yard when they want to.
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