Once again, "zero tolerance" equals "zero intelligence":

Elliot Voge, 14, told Stoneybrook Middle School principal Jimmy Meadows he forgot that he had left the Swiss Army knife in his pocket after using it to whittle wood last month. The next day, just after he was dropped off at school by a classmate's mother, he said he discovered the knife in his coat and immediately went to the office.

Nevertheless, Meadows suspended him and recommended expulsion.

I would have liked to hear the moronprincipal's side of the story, but I suspect it's the same old, mindless "rules are rules, and they must be enforced."

And they wonder why people home school.

The media doesn't exactly help this kid's case, either: "...recommended he be expelled for carrying a pocket knife, even though the boy said he had forgotten the weapon was in his coat pocket..."

Yes, that's right. A Swiss Army Knife (maybe even a Boy Scout pocket knife) is a "weapon".

The kid found it when he got to school and didn't even go to class first; he went straight to the principal and turned it in. Yet the punishment is as sever as if he had kept it hidden and threatened someone with it on the playground.

The message to kids? "Don't trust authority. Be ashamed and conceal knives in your person whether you have them by accident or on purpose."

What a bunch of malarkey.

Actually, the real motive behind this, IMO, is to punish self defense. Bully's that beat weaker kids bloody in the bathroom are seldom keyed on by the school authorities. People that fight back have suddenly turned it into a "fight". (It takes two to make a fight?). That's the major no-no. I've known women at my high-school that were suspended (the only partys suspended, BTW) only after they fought back against their attackers.

The motives behind punishing self defense? Who knows. My current leftist insanity model is that people among the left want all conflicts resolved by their own authority. If people defend themselves, they're no longer dependent on the school administrator's mercy and benevolence, and have therefore moved the resolution of the situation out of their hands. (Maybe it's a control thing?) The perpetrators of the crime don't get punished as severely because they provide the administrators with a situation to resolve, where as the person who defends himself removes the situation, and intimidates the bully.

If it were a gang-banger with a switchblade, I'm sure everything would be cool.

I read a book a few years back called "The Death of Common Sense" that was very enlightening about this kind of attitude. Basically, an increase in rules and regulations leads to a decrease in the desire to bend rules for specific circumstances.

Many people unfortunately think that you can write down a rule for every conceivable situation, and effectively legislate away the ability for reasonable people to make rational decisions.

-S

"Rules are rules and have to be enforced......"

Does anyone believe that the expulsion would have occured if is his name was Mohamad?

Couple of thoughts here:
1. WRT the whole "zero tolerance" trip, I think
one motive is all the political pressure on
school administrations to "do something about
AllTheDrugsAndViolence in the schools" - if they
cut kids any slack even for the harmless cases,
then when some kid got caught selling heroin or
something, his parents might hire a lawyer and
sue the school for "discrimination" or "selective
enforcement" or something - not that such a suit
would have any genuine merit, but petty
bureaucrats are morbidly afraid of having to even
go argue it down... they'd rather Position
Themselves so that the accusation can't even be
made... even if it means that they have to come
down on the kid whose mother gave him a knife to
cut his apple at lunch or an aspirin to keep in
his pocket in case case his h-adache was still
bothering him in the middle of the day, or the
kid who brought a model rocket to school for
"show and tell" - better to put them in trouble
for "weapons" or "drugs" or "explosives", than
risk "potentially weakening the school's legal
position in an enforcement case"...

2. As far as the bullying goes, don't you know
that there's a hidden agenda that says that
hassling the "queers" and the "geeks" and the
"weirdos" is supposed to be tacitly tolerated,
in the name of enforcing normativity? How _else_
are the kids supposed to learn that they're
supposed to "be real men" and not "act like
fairies" (etc., etc., etc.) if the other kids don't get to beat them up over it? (Look at all
the fuss that gets made against the "no name-
calling" initiatives and the "gay-straight
tolerance clubs" if you don't believe me...)

-dave w

PS. The first time I tried to post this comment
I got a message that said the operation "failed
due to questionable content" - so I replaced one
letter with a hyphen in the word that it seemed
to be objecting to... weird! (Let's see if it
works this time.)

Looks like it worked that time...
don't know who sets up the filters on this thing,
but it's the first time that I've seen a common
8-letter word for "cranial discomfort" flagged as
"Questionable Content"!!

-dave w

Unfortunately, I get a lot of comment spam for medic@tions for that ailment.

And people wonder....

Ya know when you treat a 14 year old like a baby, do you expect they'll grow up to be mature, competent adults? How will they get there? Magic?

If you want your children to grow up to be responsible, you have to allow them to have responsibility as they grow older. And you have to treat them with greater maturity as well. In the real world outside the school walls a 14 year old is old enough to have sex, do drugs, drive a car, hold a job, buy a gun, join a gang, have a drinking habit, smoke cigarettes, etc. Indeed, there is no shortage of 14 year olds, even in America, who do such things. Compare and contrast that reality with the fantasy that a 14 year old is not ready to handle a swiss-army knife safely. Maybe this is just my crazy theory but I think that a teenager who is treated like an adult-in-training is more likely to grow up into a responsible adult than someone who is treated like a helpless child.

"Unfortunately, I get a lot of comment spam..."

Rand, introducing a word-verification feature to your commenting system will eliminate all the hassles you've got with comment spam. You won't have to include all sorts of convoluted automatic spam-recognition rules anymore, which tend to filter out as many legitimate comments as they do spam.

(as was the case the first time I tried to post this comment)

I'm old enough to remember when, "It doesn't have to make sense, it's just our policy" was a joke. Today, it has become standard operating practice at a lot of schools across America.

Since when did lockstep adherence to "policy" supercede the need for judgment?

It's quite common for kids to think the school administrators are idiots. It's sad that so many of the administrators are proving the kids right.

Thankfully, it appears that the school board has more sense than the principal:

School drops knife case

From the article: "Today the school board cancelled an April 10 hearing that would have considered expelling Elliot, saying in a letter that "we can all learn from this incident and in the future apply some common sense when interpreting rules."

Thank goodness.