perhaps I was hearing things...

but this morning on my drive into the office, I heard that there was a big 'no tolerance' dust up (I THINK in CA) over a kid bringing a set of Legos to school where one of the little plastic characters had a 2" gun...a Lego gun...that only poses a choking hazard. The principal of the school decided not to suspend Little Johnny as long as the 'gun' was never brought back to school.

Can we please stop this zero tolerance bullshit? Replace it with just a shred of common sense and the ability to make decisions on a case by case basis? Do ya think we can do that? Just damn...

sP

Oh, the other kid playing with the Legos had a character with an axe...but that was deemed 'less threatening.' What the fuck could be less threatening than a 2" plastic fucking Lego gun???

WE ARE SCREWN!

pictures in the history books of the colonists with muskets. Do they make them tear out those pages and swear to never look at those pictures again?

Decommissioned and approved by the local sheriff's department.

:shrug:

I remember even back in the stone age when I was in school being chastised for bringing a cake knife to school...but I just had to give it to the teacher so SHE could cut the cake...

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It was a part of a collection of Revolutionary war artifacts, some authentic and some reproductions, put together with a grant that local teachers can sign up to use in their classrooms when teaching that time period in American history.

i wonder if a student with such an artifact would be able to bring it in? i would HOPE so, especially if certified as incapable of firing. i recall (once again, in the dark ages) teaching high school and had an empty shotgun case in my truck and i was pulled from class to have it removed. there wasn't even a gun in it...but I still had to remove the case...odd.

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get his official signature, and he has to inspect it in the parking lot before it is carried into the building, to be sure it's the same weapon the local s. department approved.

Whether or not a student could do the same? Would be up to the building admin.

There's a good example of well meaning bullshit.

I'm reminded of my Boy Scout handbook from the 50s which I still have. In the back there are ads for real guns. Some parents would go nuts if that happened today. Trying to sell guns to kids.

So what happened to us kids who were subjected to these ads? We became the peace generation.

I bought my kid the latest Nerf gun for Xmas. It's pretty cool. He loved it. He wanted to take it with him. But I had to tell him to leave it at home because some other parents would freak out if their child was exposed to such a heinous device.

Weird.

a couple of years ago, I was working at a middle school in very, small town America. I was in the classroom when a student came in to tell me that "bomb" had been written on the boy's bathroom wall. I went in and noted that just about chest level (for one of the 7th grade boys) written in pencil and approx. 1" high, the letters spelled B-O-M-B. I told the principal and suggested we sit the 7th grades boys down for a 'chat'. Much to my amazement, the police and fire department were called and school was disrupted for the rest of the day. Zeeesh!

It just keeps getting crazier

but I would bet that the "zero tolerance" idea came from a republican, because they don't like shades of gray.

I just know they leave no room for intelligent thought on a situation. I mean, the principal did what he/she HAD to do...otherwise it could mean their job...so sad the state of affairs...

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from our institutions and even from the majority of our fellow citizens. The movement is to crush common sense (which is just another way of saying 'our ability to think') and replace it with blind, unthinking subservience.

with the way the populace is constantly being dumbed-down asking for common sense may be a really bad idea.


sP

Principals have to go through extensive training to get to the position they are in. If we can't trust them to make decisions then why bother going through all that education? Why not just get a list of sanctioned reactions to anything that comes up and hire an idiot to do the job.

BTW, I always thought that was how they hired the administrators in my High School....