From MSN News:
Kindergartner suspended for comment on toy bubble gun
MOUNT CARMEL, Pa. — A 5-year-old Pennsylvania girl who told another girl she was going to shoot her with a pink toy gun that blows soapy bubbles has been suspended from kindergarten.
Her family has hired an attorney to fight the punishment, which initially was 10 days but was reduced to two.
Attorney Robin Ficker says Mount Carmel Area School District officials labeled the girl a “terrorist threat” for the bubble gun remark, made Jan. 10 as both girls waited for a school bus.
Ficker says the girl didn’t even have the bubble gun with her and has never fired a real gun. He says she’s “the least terroristic person in Pennsylvania.”
School district solicitor Edward Greco tells pennlive.com that officials are looking into the case. He said school officials aren’t at liberty to discuss disciplinary actions.
You aren’t at liberty to discuss disciplinary actions, but I am.
You are douchebags.
Idiots.
Paranoid schizophrenics with delusions of relevance.
For your gratuitous information: A child of 5 has no conception of reality when it comes to gun violence. They play with water guns and bubble guns and toy guns and parrot what they see on television. They have no idea what a real weapon can do to a human body. They play.
When reasonable adults hear a child of that age say something inappropriate, they take them aside and explain it. They offer benefits and consequences. Maybe she loses recess and goes home with a note pinned to her jacket.
But you don’t sodding call her a terrorist and suspend her from school for ten days, you asswaffles!
You blistering simpletons, you have done more to warp that little girl’s world view than anything she might have seen on television. She will never forget this event, and it is likely that she will never understand why such a firestorm of stupidity ignited around her. She will only know subconsciously that she did something horribly wrong. and will never look at another firearm in the same way again, even though carrying a legal one might save her life when she’s older.
Here’s a piece of unsolicited advice: Stick to chasing ambulances, and leave 5-year-old girls alone. Better yet, find a profession far, far away from people, where you can do no more damage with your pompous self-importance.
The Old Wolf has discussed.
Playing in the World Game 
The inmates are running the asylum because the administrators are afraid of being sued and losing their power—so they gave it away to people who have absolutely no conception of what is right.
Sometimes I am really, really glad that I don’t work for public schools any more.
Well said!
Fanx!
I’ve been reading some if not all of Randy Cassingham’s (ThisIsTrue.com) rants on Zero Tolerance, and I’ve been happy to note that no such abomination of a policy exists in Norwegian schools. Except that it has happened a few times here too, after all. It’s utterly stupid, and it shows little if any faith in our kids who are, as a rule, treated as potential (or certain) future criminals or terrorists, rather than the ones in whom we put our hopes for the future.
If Zero Tolerance is to work properly, it must be tempered with common sense. Otherwise it’s worth Zero Cents.
Sadly, you can’t temper ZT with common sense, because that would allow even the slightest bit of tolerance, which must be forbidden. When a friend of mine was expelled for school because he had a nail-set awl on his key chain that he had forgotten to remove after the weekend, there was no common sense. When the principal said, “I’m doing this to make an example of you,” to our very intelligent, responsible friend, there was no common sense in that. When the school resource officer told my best friend, “By the principal’s definition of ‘weapon’, your pencil counts as a bludgeon,” there was common sense. But no one listened to the resource officer except the two of us. Zero Tolerance implies Zero Intelligence on the part of the school administration.
Turns out, as I found out afterwards, that the episode above is indeed featured in the last premium edition of This is True. Such matters have me engaged in much head-shaking and facepalming.
I’m glad that Americans aren’t stupider than everybody else, as an awful lot of people seem to think these days. Maybe it’s because there are my goodness 70 times as many of us as there are of you? Wow!
That reaction is not only absolutely out of proportion, but it also shows that those people have not the slightest idea of what goes on in children (of that age), i.e. the very persons they should care for. Those people have no place at all in education. And that’s the opinion of a former teacher.
😀