And not because she runs around in a bathing suit, either. A little girl brought home this note from the school asking that she not bring her Wonder Woman lunch box there any more.
'The dress code we have established requests that the children not bring violent images into the building in any fashion — on their clothing (including shoes and socks), backbacks and lunchboxes. We have defined "violent characters" as those who solve problems using violence. Super heroes certainly fall into that category.'
http://www.themarysue.com/wonder-woman-lunchbox-too-violent/
This isn't the Nu52 "Wonder Woman hacking at folk with a sword" character, but a Wonder Woman who preaches peace, is in fact sent out to "Man's World" to bring a gospel against the bloodshed there, and only uses violence as a last resort.
The blanket condemnation of "super heroes" as inappropriately violent for school kids strikes me as sensitivity gone mad. One might as easily suggest that Bugs Bunny would be similarly condemned, as might a picture of a police officer, or the figures on Mount Rushmore (warmongers all).
With the proviso that we don't know the age range involved, were I the parents in this case, I'd have a long talk with the school administration. I'd also consider yanking my kid from a school that clearly can't teach history in any coherent fashion.
Well, the lunchbox industry just took a major hit, thanks to the dark and gritty trend in comics. Superman snapped Zod's neck. Captain America threw a motorcycle at a dude. Batman regularly beats bad guys to a pulp. And let's not even mention the gun-toting GI Joes. Hmmm. I wonder if they would count since they're military.
Does that mean lunchboxes with military emblems would also be out?
IMO, this zero-policy crap hurts everybody. The people enforcing the rules forget how to use common sense, simply doing as their told, while kids are taught that there's no difference between fiction and reality.
Well, the people enforcing the policy probably aren't comic geeks. As long as things like the police and military are also against the rule (which we have no reason to think they aren't), I"m hard pressed to say a blanket condemnation of super heroes doesn't fit the policy. I don't think it's entirely fair to expect school administrators to go delve into the detailed history — er, multiple histories — of each superhero to decide which ones are and aren't OK.
The policy seems questionable to me, but given the policy, the decision isn't that unreasonable. I mean, as wild school overreactions go, sending a note home asking them to please not do it again isn't so crazy.
+Kingsley Lintz I can see the argument that the execution is appropriate; the policy (as a blanket policy) is nuts, attempting to make a blanket statement that I suspect would not hold up to some significant exceptions. By abandoning the human side of such judgment calls ("That lunch box looks okay; that one isn't") for a Zero Tolerance policy, they're actually making things worse, even if it's "easier."
I agree with that, but you have to keep in mind that personal-judgment based rules like this are much harder to defend (legally) and leave an organization – especially a governmental one – dangerously open to lawsuits. Especially since those kinds of judgments often do bring in different influences. Eg; Three boys have had GI Joe lunchboxes and nobody noticed or cared, but when a girl brings one in, it suddenly strikes someone as violent; not intending to discriminate, possibly not even consciously aware of the boys, just reacting differently to a different context.
A lot of government and quasi-governmental agencies would love to be able to use case-by-case judgment to make sane sensible decisions — they're often not allowed to, and there are, really, good reasons why not. Just as there are good reasons why they should be.
In this specific instance… I'm inclined to agree that banning `violent imagery' is too much, and tips quickly into dangerous censorship. Do they censor wars out of their history class? Does anybody think violence will go away if we stop teaching our kids about it? …That's actually an interesting question, now that I think it, but I'm doubtful, and it's certainly not going to stop things like Sandy Hook which are what most of these kinds of policies are in reaction to. It's one of those, "See? We're doing something! Even if it is irrelevant to the problem, we have to do something," rules. So no, I don't agree with the policy — but I do sympathize with the school's position. Parents want to know what a school is doing to keep our kids safe, and then, when they give an answer to that, people get mad about the answers. We don't want our kids having to go through metal detectors, or try to learn under an armed guard, or have a shotgun in every locker — fine, teacher's desk — or to have to wear ridiculous uniforms or have their lunchboxes censored — we just want a magical aura of peace to protect them, and those stupid school administrators won't do it because they're stupid.
…Um, sorry. May have gone a bit ranty there. They get boxed into a corner and there really doesn't seem to BE a right answer. It probably is worth fighting it when they come out with an especially wrong one, but.. argh. I had the words I wanted for this a minute ago and now I've lost them. I just see a lot more going on here than one girl's lunchbox.
+Kingsley Lintz I have worked in enough bureaucracies (including in a school) to appreciate a lot of what you are saying. Zero Tolerance policies are generally the result of inconsistent judgment leading to varying outcomes, and either customers (parents) or upper management insist on then having inflexible policies that address maybe 90% of the cases reasonably (and with minimal effort), but then result in something silly or harmful, with no recourse for an override, in the remaining 10% of the cases. Or else they kick the can on judgment calls down the line — nobody should bring something to school that promotes or depicts violence (okay, that makes sense) turns into no depiction of anyone who belongs to a class of individuals known for using violence in some cases, which then turns into weirdness in general (police? soldiers?) and silliness in the specific (George Washington? Wonder Woman?), but is applied vigorously because either nobody is thinking about what it means, or because nobody has written a backdoor for overriding the policy, or because nobody dares do so for fear of being seen as inconsistent or giving leverage to some lawyer in some tangential case to win in court.
Which is why we can't have nice things. Like Wonder Woman lunchboxes.