Full of Wax

A 6 year old boy was recently suspended from 1st grade in Delaware for bringing a camping utensil to school that serves as a fork, spoon, and knife (The article can be found here). Apparently the boy had just joined the Cub Scouts and was so excited about it that he wanted to use this utensil at school. By all accounts, the boy is a model student and even wears a shirt and tie to school on some days by his own choice. The school district in question has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to weapons in school and felt they had no choice but to suspend him. NOW THAT IS FULL OF WAX!!

What has our Nation come to when a 6 year old boy faces suspension and a 45-day stay in the district’s reform school for wanting to show his enthusiasm for an organization widely recognized as being a positive role model for the nation’s youth?

I blame everyone for this. I blame the law makers for not explicitly giving school administrators more authority to make their own judgments in cases like these. I blame the administrators for not figuring a better way to deal with this than by the letter of the law.  I blame the teacher for not having more common sense and for escalating it to this level in the first place. I blame all of the hyper-sensitive parents for all of the lawsuits they have generated because their precious child was teased at school. I blame the psychopaths from Columbine, Virginia Tech, and every other school massacre for getting our collective fear level to the point where common sense is an afterthought. I blame the gun makers for telling us that “guns don't kill people, people kill people”. We are so afraid of getting sued, getting fired, looking bad, being different, taking a stand, and generally raging against the machine that we've gotten to the point where suspending a 6 year old boy is acceptable. 

In the same article it mentions a case of a third grade student who was expelled for bringing a knife to school. Sounds reasonable until you learn why the knife was brought to school.  It was there to cut the birthday cake that her grandmother had made for her. Oh yeah, the girl’s teacher used the knife to cut herself a piece of the cake right before she turned the little girl in. Seriously?

I would venture to guess that childhood obesity causes more absence, injury, illness, and death amongst school children than school violence. Should we start banning candy from school? Should there be a zero tolerance rule for cupcakes? Why do school districts pack our children's lunchrooms with sugar and fat when 15% of our nation's youth are considered considerably overweight.  That's 9 million kids, a number that has nearly tripled over the past 30 years.  And it gets worse.  According to the stats, the super-obesity rate has increased by 100% in the past 20 years and 7 million children have high cholesterol.  Maybe that 3rd grader should have been allowed to carry the knife and the cake should have been confiscated at the door. 

I think teachers do a great job and I think they are incredibly underpaid for the criticality of their work and for the dedication most of them give. But they have also gotten soft as a profession. We give them half-days and days off for staff development when the rest of the professional world has to figure out how to fit it in no matter how busy their schedule is. We have parents volunteering on a daily basis to put together go home folders and grade homework so the teacher doesn’t have to. We have docents of every kind so a first grade teacher doesn’t have to create art projects.  I get it, the curriculum you are forced to teach doesn't allow for a single extra second of time for you to do anything more than you already do.  I realize you think you need to move on to the next subject or topic in your Stepford Teacher's Manual even though two-thirds of your class doesn't yet understand what you just taught them.  But isn't the point of being a teacher to make sure that your student's are getting taught?  Maybe instead of staff development once a week that cuts the school day by 2 hours, we should force you to spend your nights and weekends developing.  After all, isn't that what you are asking my child to do when you give them homework every night and projects that require them to work on the weekends?
And society at large needs to stop suing and being worried about being sued and start doing the right thing. Start treating your neighbor as you would like to be treated. Start doing the right thing regardless of how unpopular the decision may be or what parent you may anger.  Start backing the people who are trying to make a difference and stop looking the other way when you know something is wrong.  You know it takes a village to raise a child but apparently it only takes a camping utensil to ruin them.