So as I contemplated on what i was going to write about this week, I decided to take a look at the main topics that Yahoo! was displaying. There was an article about a 6-year-old boy who was suspending for bringing a knife to school. Zachary Christie of Delaware was suspended from school and now faces 45 days in a reform school. Obviously his parents are fighting against this.
Zachary recently joined the Cub Scouts and received a new gadget that he was very excited about. It was like a swiss army knife though it was a gadget that could be a fork, a spoon, or a knife. Excited about using it and showing it off he brought it to school to use while eating his lunch. The school system has really cracked down and made a zero tolerance policy on weapons brought to school. Because there was a knife on the gadget that Zachary brought to school, he was suspended and is facing the school disciplinary committee. His parents say that he took school very seriously and even dressed in a collared shirt and tie just to be more serious. An innocent boy just trying to show off his new “toy” or “gadget” was punished severly.
I understand that schools should crack down on their weapons policies considering what happened at the Columbine and Virignia Tech, but how far should schools go? Do they really think that kids as young as Zachary are going to intentionally bring a weapon to school to use it for harm?
The reason the board and committee is being so strict on these policies is that they don’t want parents getting calls saying that their kid just lost both eyes to a kid that went crazy with a knife. But how many 6 year olds, especially Cub Scouts, want to use a knife in any other way than productive? Zachary made an innocent mistake. Is there any lee way to innocent mistakes on the zero tolerance policies?
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Yea I think school sometime takes things too seriously but you have to understand if he brings his Swiss army knife maybe the next day is friend will bring his toy gun or something and schools have a huge responsibly for the safety of their children so yea it is ludicrous that they would do that to the little kid. I remover in middle school my friend bought a pocket knife to school but she had it in her book bag after like a camping trip and she forget to take it out of her book bag and she was suspended for like a week. I think it should depend on the sitution of how much trouble the kid gets into.
ReplyDeleteI don't know....Tricky one. I will play devil's advocate for a moment. Say this little innocent 6 year old wasn't so innocent and was a little unstable in the head.. This is a problem kids getting hurt where they should be safe. I think the policy is good because although little Zachary made a mistake or so we think there could be a disturbed little boy or girl out there that could hurt someone, so I think having a 0 tolerance policy because thats the safest way to prevent accidents. What if we make an acceptation to the rule thats not fair.
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