The Religious Zealots

…who are running our public schools:

What’s up with this? It’s not based on any concern with safety. Lego guns, cap guns, bubble guns, nibbled Pop Tarts, and fingers are no threat to safety. And the wild overreaction in these cases says there’s more going on here than simple school discipline. As I said, who treats a 5-year-old this way? It smacks of fanaticism.

In fact, it seems like a kind of quasi-religious fanaticism. I think it’s about the administrative class — which runs the schools with as little input from parents as possible — doing its best to exterminate the very idea of guns. It’s some sort of wacky moral-purity crusade. If a few toddlers have to suffer along the way, that’s tough. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

But that raises two questions. First, what business do public schools have in trying to extirpate “impure” thoughts? Aren’t we supposed to celebrate diversity? And, second, why should public schools decide that a longtime staple of American childhood, the toy gun, is suddenly evil?

Suppose you wanted to raise a generation that was both frightened of guns and thought them evil, except in the hands of government employees, and wanted to make thaat generation supine, disarmed sheep, and deferential to those same people. This is exactly what you would do.

These people are stupid, or evil, or both.

17 thoughts on “The Religious Zealots”

    1. They know exactly what they’re doing.

      While some students will develop an interest in guns just to be contrary and rebellious to overbearing authority, I think the majority will absorb the lesson “I’ll get in serious trouble if I even so much as think about a gun.”

  1. I’m voting Both. But from an evil and power mad stance, that seeks control of our lives.

  2. I’d say a mix. Some are definitely evil, and know precisely what they’re doing. Some are stupid, and believe what they’ve been told about guns, and think this will somehow help. Some might be both–evil enough to want to warp the kids but too stupid to realize that that’s what these policies are doing.

  3. I vote “stupid,” and that the parents need to lawyer up. Hell, I’d be happy to make a small donation to the cause.

  4. Add this to the evidence pile:

    A seventh grader from Calgary who stopped a bully from stabbing a classmate was reprimanded by the school for his act of bravery and sent home.

    Briar MacLean told the National Post he was sitting in study class last Tuesday, when the bully began “poking and prodding” his victim.

    Briar recalled seeing the bully putting his classmate in a headlock, and hearing the unmistakable “flick” of a pocket knife.

    “I heard them say there was a knife,” said the 13-year-old, who instinctively tackled the bully, prompting the teacher, who was on the opposite side of the room at the time, to take notice.

    Briar thought he had done the right thing until three periods later when he was called into the vice principal’s office to be reprimanded.

    The boy’s mother, Leah O’Donnell, was called and told that her son had been involved in an incident and was trying to “play hero.”

    She was further informed that Sir John A. Macdonald junior high school does not “condone heroics,” and her son should have sought out a teacher instead.

    In many schools, teachers are prohibited from breaking up a fight because they or the students might get injured, leading to a lawsuit. Instead, the administration punishes the aggressor and victim equally for fighting. If a kid gets injured or worse, then they wring their hands and ask for more money as a cure to all their problems.

    1. I can not call a society “civilized” where stopping a violent crime in progress is punished. The same deficient mentality that says to cower and wait for the police as a mass shooting is in progress.

      That boy wasn’t playing hero, he was a hero.

      1. In places like the UK, they’ve taken it a step further. Not only is stopping a violent crime against others considered wrong by the authorities, so is defending yourself. That’s barbarism, pure and simple. It puts the interests of the thugs over those of the law abiding.

      2. In my ex-hometown, the advent of CCW laws was marked by an editorial in the local fishwrap declaring that even if armed citizens did in fact prevent rapes and murders and reduce crime rates, it still shouldn’t be legal because it wasn’t what civilized people do.
        Evidently being civilized means surrendering one’s body to barbarians…

    2. She was further informed that Sir John A. Macdonald junior high school does not “condone heroics,” and her son should have sought out a teacher instead.

      At that point she should have punched the principal right in the face. The resulting arrest would have been 100% worth it. Jail time goes a lot faster when you get to spend your sentence savoring the memory of giving a damned fool his just desserts.

      Going to jail is not the worst thing that can happen to a man. Not by a damned sight.

  5. When considering the origin of the sudden emergence of female superiority over male student performance I have previously disregarded the idea that teachers were, as a class so politically indoctrinated that they were purposely holding males back. That premise no longer seems untenable.

  6. The extreme stupidity, not to mention the horrible academics and lack of discipline is the reason that I took my child out our local public school and put her in a private school.

  7. And yet another example – kid suspended for 10 days for talking about guns.

    It’s time to start firing some of these school officials. That’s the only way to get through to them.

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