Reading, Writing and Arithmetic But Common Sense Ought to Be Added to The Curriculum For Teachers, Administrators

Enough is enough.  I am sick of this hyper-sensitivity.  Only an idiot would advocate or support the actions of the schools in these two stories.

First, a second grade student, Josh Welch, was suspended from his Baltimore, MD elementary school for having a pastry that was in the shape of a gun.  No, this is no joke.  The child “was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped the strawberry, pre-baked toaster pastry into something resembling a gun”, according to The Daily Caller and Fox News affiliate WBFF.

In an even more bizarre story, three Florida high school students were suspended after they disarmed another student on a bus who pulled a loaded .22 on a fellow student.  Yes, that’s right, no good deed goes unpunished.  According to a school spokesman, “the school justified the suspension, which lasted for the rest of the week, on the ground that the students who prevented a deadly shooting were part of an ‘incident’ involving a weapon”.

How incredibly stupid can these people be?  What is fueling all this hyper-sensitivity?  Is it the Sandy Hook school shooting?  Columbine?  Media hysteria?  Ignorance?  The answer is all of the above.  While the school shootings are tragic, these events have been used by the anti-gun lobby, the media and others to further their cause.  The zeal these schools have shown for ‘zero tolerance’ is, in part, responsible for the tragedies themselves.  The lack of an ability to fight back has made soft targets of school campuses.  The shooters involved all had one thing in common: they were cowards.  They attacked people they knew full well could not fight back, then, when the cops closed in, they killed themselves.

The media, particularly the so-called ‘mainstream media’, loves tragedy.  If it bleeds, it leads, so goes the old adage from the heyday of print media.  And television media in particular loves a good blood-and-guts-guns-gone-wild tragedy.  They’d love to disarm all of us.  Never mind that Ted Kennedy’s car has killed more people than most of our guns ever will.  All much of the media is concerned with is how to disarm all of the ‘gun loving rednecks’ of America.  What part of “shall not be infringed” do they not understand?

As for the actions of these schools, they are acting foolishly.  To suspend a child for drawing or pretending to have a weapon is beyond stupid.  Suspending students who may well have stopped another school related shooting from happening-it’s beyond the pale.  We’ve lost sight of what should be an obvious, inescapable fact: bad people have always been around and always will be.  Disarming the rest of us will do nothing to stop bad people from doing bad things.  Suspending a child for pretending to have a firearm or knife or any other weapon is simply stupid.  They’re kids.  We all played cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers as children.  Most of us grew up to be productive citizens who’ve never harmed a soul.  Suspending kids for taking action that may well have saved a life is beyond stupid.  These kids acted in a heroic manner in my opinion.  They exhibited a level of maturity that many adults aren’t even capable of.  When are we (the parents, the public at-large) going to take control again?  Or have we ever had control?  Its actions like these that drive the wedge even deeper into the public education system.  Frankly, I don’t blame anyone who takes their children and walks away from this system.  Common sense, it appears, is not welcomed.  Apparently, it’s not on the test.