"...makes him feel safe."

Oh, come on.

watching them.

Then they grow up and still believe it, sad.

The only way I see this as different from a lucky pen or something that gives a kid confidence when taking a test, is that it's more important for a kid to feel safe.

including me wore devotional scapulars around the neck. They're very light, lie flat, and don't show under clothing. The only place you would see them was at gym class and no one ever said anything.

I live in Central California, and my wife is a kindergarten teacher. Every single year she has at least one kid in her class throwing gang signs and declaring that they're in this gang or that gang. When it first started happening, she thought it was just kids playing around, but she's realized over the years that it's a bit darker than that. They are almost always the kids of gang members who are simply emulating the behaviors of the adults they're seeing at home. Last year she had a kid who came to school every day for weeks with some fairly well done "tattoos" done in permanent Sharpie, that were clearly identifying the kid as a Suereno. She later found out that both his dad and his older brother were hardcore Suerenos and that they were drawing the Sharpie tats because "the ones he did himself looked stupid". The kid was suspended and his parents were told to keep him home until he could come to school without the gang markings. She never saw him again.

Her school has had first and second graders get in gang fights on the playground, because one kid will throw a Norteno sign and some other kid will throw a Suereno sign back at him. They've been told, their entire lives, that when someone does that to you, the proper response is to beat them down.

I'm sorry but "he's a 3rd grader" doesn't mean much of anything anymore.

Your observed incidents don't change the fact that this is a child. It sounds like her school could really use an effective social worker.

I do not agree with the school in this instance.

The administrators somehow got it in their pointy heads that gang members (in third grade?!) use rosaries as symbols. You know, like Beyonce's hand gestures.

Just curious. Does that include non-Christian symbols, i.e. Muslim?

I agree the kid should be allowed to wear it inside his shirt. I don't agree that he should wear it outside his shirt where it can be grabbed or caught in things.

Really i can see the argument against letting third graders wear jewelry to school so no one should be allowed to wear it but if it is just because it is a rosary then that is not reasonable.

It's a set of prayer beads, not a necklace. At least that's what my Catholic mother told me.

(Not the point, I know. I do think the school overstepped their bounds a bit here.)

Always seemed rather necklace-shaped to me though. Hardly the biggest contradiction that occurred to this ex-Catholic on my long (and doubtlessly incomplete) journey toward agnostic reason & liberty, but still...



-app

in Mexican Catholic culture, wearing the rosary as a necklace is very common, while in the US it's frowned upon.

The kid is Latino....and doing something normal for his culture.

The Central California gangs use them as identifiers. The color of the beads identifies your major gang affiliation. Patterns in the beads identify the specific gang you belong to. A rosary with blue beads indicates that the wearer is a Suereno. A pattern of 1-3-1 with darker beads might indicate that the wearer is a member of ESM, which is a particular gang within the Suerenos.

The rosary itself has no religious value for the wearer. It's simply a newer version of the bandana hanging out of the pocket.

Policy is policy, just because he belongs to the popular cult doesn't mean he should get special treatment.

They're children. If we can't uphold a basic policy against them, then it's no wonder we're a half decade away from major fascist secession...

and I think this is a dumb rule.

"Gang affiliated?" A rosary? What gang? Maybe this one?

Neckwear isn't the issue. It's religious symbolism, which is first amendment protected. If everyone is equally forbidden from any religious symbolism then it may be defensible as equal protection. Otherwise it is clearly a violation of this student's constitutional rights. It must be completely uniform.

of no neckwear. I would not impede a religious symbol as long as it does not disrupt learning. I believe in self expression.

I doubt a 3rd grader will be scarred by this. His parents might scar him by trying to make this into a big deal, however.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Everything is a satellite to some other thing.[/center][/font][hr]

If he wants to have the thing with him, he'd be better off putting it in a pouch around his neck. Displaying it is an invitation for punks to snag it and break it.

In gang areas, perhaps school colors of black/white/grey might be in order--with uniforms to match!

As long as no yarmulke, or hijabs, or buddhist beads or prayer wheel, or wiccan or any religous pendants like star of david, crosses are allowed either then who cares. State schools are either for seperation of church and state or they aren't. Calling one religous symbol 'gang affiliation garb' to get past the religous element is just fakery bias against one religion. Deep six them all or none. Almost as bad as not allowing red or blue colors, that leaves black (also gangbanger), green, yellow, white and purple. What will designers do now ? Does this principal rate the pants draggers, underwear displayers the same way ?

On edit: of course the childs father could talk to a priest to get the church's take on it .. ie:

is the likelihood of religion developing into an us\them dynamic that could actually become confrontational.

I'm not familiar with gang symbols or how they influence youth, but it seems like this is going a little far because it sounds like the kid views it more as a good luck charm than a religious or gang symbol.
At the same time, potential fallout from wearing a lucky confederate flag might give me pause, so this is a tough one.

How about this one?

A t-shirt or hat or something with a widely recognized hate symbol could be pretty divisive even among high schoolers.

If a kid goes to a PUBLIC school ALL "religious" stuff needs to be left at home..

Hey, watch out for those Pope Francis gangs.