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education and schooling folly

A Pointed Reminder

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“In schools,” the Washington Post headline warned, “a pointed finger or a toy gun can spell trouble.” The front-page feature detailed a far too extensive and growing list of zero tolerance, zero commonsense punishments meted out to children as young as five at various “educational” institutions.

A ten-year old boy in Alexandria, Virginia, showed kids on the bus his new toy gun, which sported a bright orange tip to let even the most dense person know its essential toyness. Police arrested him the next day.

His mother points out that her son did not threaten anyone. Or pretend to. Nevertheless, he has been “fingerprinted and photographed,” writes the Post. “He now has a probation officer, lawyers and another court date.”

In my Virginia county, Prince William, an eight-year-old boy contorted his hand and fingers into an apparently loaded pistol and through insidious manipulation of his mouth and lips may have imitated the sound of firing hot lead at a classmate, while said classmate was, in an evil orgy of violence, simultaneously pretending to be shooting arrows from an invisible bow.

The finger-slinger was suspended for “threatening to harm self or others.” He did neither, of course, but his offense is equivalent to having waved a loaded gun. (No word on the whereabouts of the silent-but-deadly pantomime archer.)

A five-year-old girl was interrogated by three school staff members, summarily found guilty of issuing a “terroristic threat,” and suspended for ten days for allegedly attempting to murder her friend and then commit suicide. She offered to unload her weapon all over her friend and herself. The weapon? A Hello Kitty gun, which fires bubbles.

The Post suggests the schools are jumpy after the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. But this zero tolerance insanity didn’t begin last December.

My grandson was suspended from his public school more than a year ago. He was six and playfully shot his finger at several fellow students.

Educators, who long ago abandoned the distinction between play and reality, must have been shocked at the lack of fatalities.

Does the crusade against crime really require public institutions to reject, utterly, common sense?

Shouting “No!” . . . I’m Paul Jacob.

12 replies on “A Pointed Reminder”

Has there ever been a more ridiculous term than “Zero Tolerance”?
For more than a decade Americans have been told we are the target of evil. To live that long in the shadow of threats begins to erode sanity and so we have society believing in the ability to legislate away the very evil inside us.
Only the ignorant, feebleminded or duped can believe someone has the means to keep us forever safe from bad things. Meanwhile, this country is being destroyed by its own citizens, for the masses believe if we give up enough of our rights, outlaw enough behavior and punish enough scofflaws, bad things won’t happen. Good luck with that to the country formerly known as the United States of America.

Unbelievable but, compared to all the other psycho nonsense going on right now (“we don’t have a spending problem, we have a revenue problem”), all too believable. In criminal law, generally, minors are not held responsible for serious crimes like actual murder, because they are deemed incapable of forming the intent, or mens rea, to commit the crime. In these cases, where common sense screams that the kid is just playing “cops & robbers” or “cowboys and indians”, or imitating some stupid tv show or movie he saw, the law swings into action and charges them, even though they have not commited any offense, much less intended to.

Have to listen to exactly what the pols say. Ms. Pelosi said that “..to say we have a spending problem is almost a false arguement.” Which is the same as saying “almost not pregnant”. Which means you need to be deciding on pink or blue.

Kids pretend when trying out role models. In all the lib-prog life scenarios, there are zero good-guy-with-gun, rescuer roles for private citizens. Nor is it feasible for private citizens to imagine that they might even take on a rescuer role and even if it meant giving up private citizen status. Zero guns. Zero rescuers. Zero role models.

When I am the target of a finger shooting here at home, I just say, “Hey, point that thing somewhere else.” (: Sometimes I even push the weapon in another direction.

My kids have been taught what the Bill of Rights says about their individual liberty. I do not try to terrify them about owning weapons. They also enjoy archery.

I also make a point of not terrifying them about using electricity, or water, or eating food, or about burning fires/the combustion of hydrocarbons of any kind. I do not terrify them with tales of hurting the planet with a harmless trace gas, co2 – or methane from cows. I don’t use science to transmit wild fears to young people who do not know any better. I consider that to be closer to child abuse than education.

Weapons are private property and science is used to enrich and add new powers to human life. How’s that for an education?

Fanatics never know when to stop.

Also, school districts in many cities are now functionally run by lawyers in order to avoid any possibility of lawsuit. See the problem?

Like him or not, Glenn Beck had an interesting take on all of this. It’s not just zero common sense, it’s trying to make kids think guns are evil, and make them totally scared of the idea of a gun.
An (in)famous mis-leader once said give me tweve years of indoctrination and I will give you back obedient little slaves.
Not the exact quote, but you get the idea.

The road to hell, and total tyranny, is paved with the good intentions of the foolish.
The government is engaged in “doublethink” and we a prosecuting “thought crime”.

Aberrant behavior when identified, should be recognized. I don’t agree with the way these were handled but if you’re talking about common sense, don’t let your children listen to, or watch the news! Monkey see, monkey do — children are all for it!

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