Eighth-grade boy suspended from school for drawing a gun

[firecat]

No, I don't mean pulling a gun from a holster and brandishing it. I mean using a pencil to doodle a gun in the margin of his homework assignment.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/95563

It's a good thing they didn't have these zero-tolerance policies when I was in fourth grade and a bunch of us were spending lots of class time designing complex, Rube-Goldberg-esque torture conveyor belts.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I drew torture devices, guns, and swastikas, among other things.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I often find myself thinking that the poems that I wrote (and submitted as creative writing work) would, if I did so now, get me suspended at least and probably put into some sort of counselling programme.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

When Ben Mosteller came to the school to discuss his son’s punishment, he said school officials mentioned the seriousness of the issue and talked about the massacre at Columbine High School — the site where two teenagers shot and killed 12 students and injured 24 others in 1999 at Littleton, Colo.

People like these "school officials" need to be dragged into an alley and beaten severely, just so that they can learn the difference between actual violence and harmless doodling. Or simply because it would serve them right. I don't much care which. :)

[firecat]

If I were a school official, I would now have to hunt you down and jail you for saying that.

[firecat]

Oh, yeah. I frightened one of my high school teachers by writing a science fiction short story in which, because I did not specify the genders of my main characters or give them gendered names, the teacher assumed they were both male, and thus thought I was writing about Teh Gay Sex OMG when they got smoochy at the end.

[bastette-joyce.livejournal.com]

God, that poor kid. I'm seething in sympathy for his parents, too.

Suppose this kid was in an abusive family situation, and was drawing what he knew, ie, violence, maybe guns? And they suspended him, rather than asking him why he drew it? The things kids write and draw are a form of self-expression, and something like this could be meaningful, in some cases. This particular drawing sounds pretty mindless and probably didn't mean anything, but they didn't even bother to talk to him.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

Thank god he didn't post it to LJ or the abuse team would implode.

What an amazingly stupid thing for a school --a school, dammit!!!-- to do.

[firecat]

Good point. It reminds me of that scene in The Sixth Sense.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

School bureaucracy is so dumb!

Somebody I know had just dropped off his daughter at after-school band practice last night when there was a tornado warning. All the kids, teachers and parents went to the interior halls and sat. Then the power went off because of the storm.

One teacher said, "we can't have the kids in the building when the power is off. It's against the rules."

My friend said, "uh, there's a tornado out there. That should trump your other policy."