Thread: Damn school policy gone fooking nuts

BBC NEWS | Americas | Boy punished for cutlery breach

A six year old boy took a little camping combination knife/fork/spoon to school and got into a whole load of trouble.

The school in response to their zero tolerance policy on knives initially 'sentenced' him to 45 days at an alternative school for troublemakers

Thankfully on appeal his punishment was downgraded to a three to five day suspension, the poor kid probably won't even understand what its for.

I don't really blame the school, obviously they have to have a zero tolerance policy on bringing knives to school, and I guess they felt beurocracy compelled them to operate by the letter of the law, but DAMN a 45 day sentence to a troublemaker school, that poor kid must have been terrified

Schools are a bit mental in the US with all that zero tolerance stuff, getting more that way in the UK too from what I can gather.

Rules are rules I guess, and there is no doubt that kids of that age should not have knives....but whatever happened to the good old fashioned slap on the wrists? Oh, that's right you can't even touch a child these days.

Originally Posted by miles

Schools are a bit mental in the US with all that zero tolerance stuff, getting more that way in the UK too from what I can gather.

Rules are rules I guess, and there is no doubt that kids of that age should not have knives....but whatever happened to the good old fashioned slap on the wrists? Oh, that's right you can't even touch a child these days.

Oh I should have stressed, he took it to school so he could eat with it in the canteen, just an entirely innocent six year old boy who had been on a camping trip and wanted to use his new camping knife/fork/spoon combo.

The thing is though I guess there probably is some 6 year old kid in America who would take it school and kill someone with it, such is the fucked up world we live in.....

Things are def knee jerk these days.We used to go to Cub scout meetings right after school and wore uniform during class that one day of the week,with a little crappy fold out knife to boot.Cub scout logo and all on it.

There is no such thing as "Case by case" basis in this world is there.. Or someone using some discretion.. Or f'k that, common sense!!!!!

The kid is 6!!! He hasn't behaved bad,, he didn't pull his knife out to threaten anyone, he didn't cut anyone, he hasn't shown dangerous behaviour.. He brought a swiss army knife type thing to school that is probably his dads or something which he's real proud of and wanted to show other kids....

It woudl have worked JUST AS WELL to sit the kid down and explain, knives are dangerous and can cause harm to people, and they are not allowed at school.. Send a letter home to parents letting them know he'd brought it to school, that's it..

That is common sense...

For the intelligence and brain power that most human beings have for calculating things.. When it gets put into a collective organisation with rules and enforcements and all that sort of crap, it somehow deducts the billions and billions of collective braincells down to about 10.....

The sad part is there is a story like this every day.. A story in every school, every workplace, everywhere where there is some knob with no common sense getting paid to much for shuffling paper, making decisions and ruling on things that he has no idea about and spent about 1 calorie of mental energy working out...



It's the level of thinking in these cases that makes me wonder how human beings will ever survive.... The answer most likely is we won't...

Seriously, they should have just confiscated his combo for a day or two to remind him how he can't do it, lend it back after school with a strong warning that next time there will be suspension and that is it, it's not like if he did bring a Rambo knife with him or anything, just a swiss combo, I think it's easier to hurt somebody with a metal lunch box than with such knifes.

The SIMPLE explination of this is that School Officials/Administrators want policies that they don't want to have to make a judgement call on. The less you have to think about whether or not to punish someone then the easier it is for them. Also from a risk standpoint if you let this slide (in their minds) perhaps he brings the knife back to school and stabs everyone.

Either way all that was needed was someone to just have the balls to make a decision by themself instead of going by the book and being a damned bureaucrat.