You could probably blame lawyers and our litigious society,
but you can also call all the school administrators
COWARDS
for not having the guts to say that a cubscout from a responsible family with a camping knife/utensil
is DIFFERENT
from the kid of a crackho with no father bringing a knife to school to “cut some cracka”.
but you can also call all the school administrators
COWARDS
for not having the guts to say that a cubscout from a responsible family with a camping knife/utensil
is DIFFERENT
from the kid of a crackho with no father bringing a knife to school to “cut some cracka”.
EXACTLY! And that worked when America had common sense and a consensus on what constituted appropriate and inappropriate social behavior. This was destroyed in large part by Communist infiltration of our education system at all levels.
I can’t read the rest of the article because I refuse to sign up for the NYT. But, it makes sense to me that a school cannot take a knife from one 6yo child but let another keep one. If nothing else, that would cause trouble between the students themselves.
45 days for a 6yo with a pocketknife is ABSURD. But, I could understand if the school had merely taken it away and held it aside for him.
But, this school did this child a favor. The mother should continue homeschooling. We started homeschooling when the local public school kicked our eldest child at age 4 out of its optional preschool program. He always was a good boy - the teacher’s pet, in fact. But, he was sick for a week, and our car had broken down, so I couldn’t bring him everyday. The principal threatened me with truancy charges if I didn’t remove him from the program.
Obviously, the school didn’t have a zero tolerance policy because another parent with a child in the same class told me her child had missed even more days, and she said she knew a lot of parents who didn’t take their children to preschool everyday. She said, “It’s OPTIONAL.” But, she also said she was active in the PTA and the principal would’ve never tried that with her. She said, “There are a lot of politics going on at the school.”
So, I can understand the reasons behind “zero tolerance” policies. If what one child does is an “infraction”, other children doing the same thing should receive the same “penalties” if there are any. But, again, this particular penalty - 45 days for ANY 6yo child - is ridiculous. I don’t care what kind of family the child is from. Even a 6yo child living with a neglectful, abusive, drug addicted parent shouldn’t be sentenced to reform school, either; instead, he should be placed with a good family, if the situation is that bad.