Cool. Not only were seven fourth graders suspended from school for playing “army and aliens,” which game involved “shooting” at each other with pointed fingers, but the school questioned the kids on whether or not their parents own guns, too.
Last time I checked, that was still legal.
Better yet, the story notes that this took place at Dry Creek Elementary School, only mile or two from my house (though, mercifully, not in our school district).
The kids in question were sent home with their parents for the day, though it was not formally listed as a “suspension.” They were also sentenced to a week’s lunchtime detention, on public display. For shooting at each other with their fingers.
(They’re lucky. In some schools they could have been suspended or even expelled.)
The school and the Cherry Creek School District both, of course, defend their action as appropriate and in keeping with their dedication toward safety. The rules which the kids evidently broke?
The Student Policy and Discipline Handbook defines “violent and aggressive behavior” as “threats directed, either orally (including by telephone), by non-verbal gesture, or in writing, at an individual, his or her family or a group.” Under “intimidation/bullying,” the code includes “any written or verbal expression, physical act or gesture, or a pattern thereof, that is intended to cause distress upon one or more students.”
Even without the school policy, zero tolerance is the law in Colorado, considered at the forefront of the movement. Colorado law mandates expulsion for students who “carry, bring, use or possess a firearm or firearm facsimile at school.”
Nowhere does the law mention fingers, but Mrs. Mickle [the principal] said the conduct code gives administrators the latitude to deal with problems as they arise. “It’s definitely not spelled out in the district discipline policy because we can’t predict what every student is going to do,” she said. “That’s what we’re here for: to interpret those details.”
Ah. Is that what you’re there for?
Of course, the touted strength of ZT policies is that they are supposed to avoid any sort of namby-pamby interpretation of the rules by laying out in black and white what is always disallowed. Mrs. Mickle’s stance seems to be that it’s perfectly acceptable to extend those rules even further, as the administration sees fit.
That sounds like a valuable lesson in civics, yessirree.
The kids, of course, had never been in trouble before, and even though finger-pointing was not explicitly spelled out in the rules, it would have been tantamount to capitulation to the terrorists for the administration to simply warn the kids that what they were doing was wrong.
But that’s why they call it zero tolerance. “‘No tolerance’ means more than just a warning, because that would mean tolerance,” Mrs. Mickle said.
As to the inquiry as to whether any of the families had guns in the home?
“The district must know whether a student has the means to carry out a threat of violence to help us determine the level of the threat of violence against other students or staff,” said Ms. Amole, the spokeswoman.
Let me make sure I understand. Kids playing “army and aliens” during recess constituted a “threat of violence” to “other students or staff,” therefore the district was entitled to find out if the kids had access to real guns at home, just in case they … what, came back to school and played “army and aliens” with real guns?
This is getting more and more absurd, and, frankly, more and more scary.
Ok, This might by like a rant, but bear with me. In this country, we have decided that the appearance of being safe is much more important than actual safety. And the scary part is that many people are being fooled into thinking they are the same thing!
I had someone tell me yesterday, that she is fine with the new secority at local stadiums and ballparks with include no backpacks (unless they are really a purse that masquerades as a backpack), no bags or purses larger than 14″ by 14″ (which will be interesting later this year when they give away bags during the game) and searches that make the airport security look minor.
However, you can carry a small box of Crunch N’ Munch right through (which I do since I don’t like Craker Jacks), a box easily large enough to carry in a significant amoutn of plastic explosives. They never even ask to shake the box! And don’t get me started about my dad and his wheelchair. Though he is more than ready to opne the three separate pouches that he carries on his chair, they never ask. How safe is that!
It surely looks like we are very safe, when in reality we are fooling ourselves, just like these school administrators are. How dangerous is a game? I think all competative athletics should be baned because they represent two warring factions fighting one another, and that could cause children to think that it’s right to settle your differences with a one on one competition. Bleh!!
I’m not sure where the best answer lies (I think El Al is pretty close, but that might not fly with the Constitution), but right now all we are is a bunch of ostrich tails in the air hoping that no one is really paying attention to how little progress we are actually making.
Amen, Mary.
To my mind, it’s not even a matter of an appearance of safety. School districts like ZT because (a) it gives them protection to hide behind in their actions, which can now be knee-jerk and unconsidered — “The rules say so, so there”, and (b) it provides safety … for the district, from law suits. After all, if another Columbine takes place, the districts will be much safer if they can show how diligent they were about “security.”
That’s part of why I found the comments by Mickle to be so amazing — because they move the decision-making back into an interpretive mode. That suddenly opens up the liability question again, and requires them to defend their interpretive (and indefensible) actions.
I would *so* be kicked out of school in these intolerant times (remember when that word just meant you didn’t like black people? – and it was ‘polite’ to use it in that manner…)
Public, lunchtime detention for fingerpointing?
You know what my response to that would be… you might as well just brand the anarchist symbol on my forehead in 3rd grade, because I would not be able to resist the impulse to ‘go postal’ with my fake gun finger and ‘off’ everyone in the cafeteria, just for laughs…
Home schooling, off I go.
Ever watch ‘The Breakfast Club’? What do you think that bunch would do under zero tolerance?
How do you think you would have held up under it?
I would have failed with flying colors…
boyo.
This kind of crap will stop when the parents of children in these schools rise up and start raise hell with the school boards and with their legislators.
Jenn, I would have been in way serious trouble. Playing various “war” games was standard on our playground. Drawing pictures of classmates with which one had a dispute being shot by jets and bombers was a regular passtime. Heck, I even got into a few fights after school.
And I was one of the good kids.
Randy, you are, of course, correct. School boards (and legislatures) are popularly elected. Ultimately, the responsibility is the People’s to make it clear that this goofiness cannot stand. Unfortunately, it will probably take several more years of this sort of folly to get enough popular support to do so.
UPDATE: The Rocky has its coverage on this (a day later?) here.
It’s not even clear from this story whether any of the lethal “fingers” were pointed at each other, but evidently there was much rolling about on the ground, which a district official said was reported by a playground monitor and at least one student as “violent and aggressive behavior.”
I went to Willow Creek Elementary, the “next-door neighbor” of Dry Creek and in the same district. I’m fairly young, and attended from 1983 to 1989. Just off-hand, I can remember: –tackle football; –cops & robbers in gym class; –playing army on the jungle gym (which was made of wood and metal, no plastic in sight); –dogpiling; –being jabbed in the palm with a pencil so I could have a “tattoo” of a black dot; –being stabbed in the cheek with a pen by a bully, who was sent to the principal’s office but wasn’t suspended; –beating up a kid with funny glasses.
In other words, my elementary school experience of a mere 15 years ago was fraught with competition, pain, intolerance, violence, tears, jeering, and non-politically correct statements about obesity. I believe the fact that my life no longer includes, to a large extent, the intolerance-violence-tears-jeering part of the equation is directly attributable to my experiences, not in spite of them.
It’s amazing how quickly the nannies have overtaken the school system, and done so to such a degree that kids are no longer allowed to EDUCATE THEMSELVES on the trials and tribulations of life while it’s still safe. What really produced Columbine? A lack of administrative force and oversight? Or a collectively suppressed childhood in school districts naive enough to think their adequate funding allows for “comfortable” social engineering?
We have, it seems, moved from a period when bullies and abuse were tolerated, or dismissed as “kids will be kids,” to a period when nothing that seems the least bit aggressive, or even assertive or competitive, is met with a full-bore response to suppress it.
One can but hope that the pendulum will swing back, if not all the way.
I think you are all idiot and I pity and hope god has mercy on your worthless souls, why don’t write something that actually pretains to the matter of anti zt sentiment so I can have evidence for my support
WTF?
I might suggest to Francis, charitably, that support might be more credible in the context of good spelling and grammar. Not to mention lucidity.