There have been a lot of news stories recently about young children being punished for talking about guns, making toy guns, owning toy guns, and drawing guns. This new story takes the cake: a group of students from Chase Lake Elementary School in Edmonds, Washington, asked their teacher if they could bring Nerf guns to school. The teacher gave permission, but the school punished the children with suspension anyway.
The students even had a perfectly legitimate reason to bring the guns to school; they wanted to fire foam darts 100 times as part of a probability experiment.
The school quickly enforced its zero tolerance policy and booted the students. In fact, they even suspended students who were simply present during the experiment. Shannon Shumard’s fourth grade daughter and sixth grade son got caught in the crossfire because they played with the guns, even though other students brought the guns to school.
The parents of the suspended students have said that they intend to appeal the suspensions, but the school stands strong by its convictions. “Again, it’s a matter of safety and it’s of the utmost importance. So even if it’s a toy, we take it seriously,” said Amanda Ralston, a spokeswoman for the school district.
The peculiar thing about this story isn’t that the school enforced such harsh penalties on the students – that seems to be the popular strategy nowadays. What’s odd is that the students were punished instead of the teacher.
Kids violating the rules is one thing, but punishing students after a teacher gave the Nerf guns a thumbs up is much more problematic.
Shumard added, “If the teacher and the school staff don’t even know their own rules, how are the children supposed to know them?”
All of these recent stories have called into question the severity of school gun policies. Do you think that being so relentless against guns will help prevent children from bringing real guns to school, or do you think that the schools are overreacting to a bit of harmless fun?
http://refreshingnews99.blogspot.in/2013/06/teacher-kids-bring-your-nerf-guns-to.html
I’m surprised that all the schools don’t have the kids stripping down to make sure they don’t have any weapons hidden anywhere. I wonder what they would do if a kid has a birthmark that “resembled a gun”?
You mean to tell me that the teacher wasn’t suspended for telling them to bring the guns in for an math experiment but kids were?
HAHAAHAAHAHA!!! OMG!! Yes, once again, let’s punish the students with the toy guns rather than the root cause of the problem which was the teacher telling them to bring them in the first place. WTF!!??
“The parents of the suspended students have said that they intend to appeal the suspensions, but the school stands strong by its convictions. “Again, it’s a matter of safety and it’s of the utmost importance. So even if it’s a toy, we take it seriously,” said Amanda Ralston, a spokeswoman for the school district.”
Even if it’s a toy, we take it seriously?? HAHAHA!!! Wow! Go hide under a rock you, cowardly fools! Grow a pair of damn balls!!!
Good question NC. WHY wasn’t the teacher suspended or something? And I wonder about why the parents intend to appeal? Appeal what? The fact that their children are subject to the whims of control freaks who consider common sense to be vastly overrated? How about have a parents meeting, pull your children out of that asylum and home school your kids? How about go as a group to have a sit down with these clowns and videotape the whole thing. And if they continue to act like self righteous fools, put the video on Youtube so they can be the butt of jokes all over the world.
I’ve got a cure for the stupidity, revoke all the stupid rules about guns, start an after school shooting program, teach gun handling and safety, encourage discussions about guns. Otherwise, everything that could be used as a weapon should be banned, pencils, pens, rulers, books, no more shop classes, no more cooking classes (oohh, they have knifes). What a hopeless, liberal world we live in.
“All of these recent stories have called into question the severity of school gun policies.”
All of these recent stories have called into question the reason for these schools existence. You may as well send your kid off to a Moonie camp to be brainwashed.
People are so incredibly passive these days. If this non-sense happened when I was in school teachers would be afraid to show up for work the next day.
Those parents should go down to that school with Louisville Sluggers and beat some sense into the school board.
If guns are being wished and censored out of existence, how will history be taught? It will be interesting to teach about two world wars, countless small ones that have shaped the world, including recent experiences with terrorism without every mentioning the use of a firearm.
What kind of world view are we promoting that says that a gun-toting US soldier is a hero but the tool of his trade is evil and can’t be named?
This is neurotic silliness run amok.
Glad I homeschool.