Have the public school officials across the country lost their ever lovin minds?
Fox43:
A Suffolk school suspended a second grader for pointing a pencil at another student and making gun noises. Seven-year-old Christopher Marshall says he was playing with another student in class Friday, when the teacher at Driver Elementary asked them to stop pointing pencils at each other.
"When I asked him about it, he said, 'Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,'" said Paul Marshall, the boy's father. "It's as simple as that."
Christopher's father was a Marine for many years. He thinks school leaders overreacted.
"A pencil is a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made," said Bethanne Bradshaw, a spokesperson for Suffolk Public Schools.
The Suffolk school system has a "zero tolerance policy" when it comes to weapons. And, Bradshaw admits, that policy has tightened up in recent years because of widely publicized school shootings.
"Some children would consider it threatening, who are scared about shootings in schools or shootings in the community," said Bradshaw. "Kids don't think about 'Cowboys and Indians' anymore, they think about drive-by shootings and murders and everything they see on television news every day."
But Christopher's parents say school administrators failed to use common sense. Christopher has good grades and no history of being disruptive in class. They pointed out a line on the suspension notice, where the teacher wrote, "I told him to stop and he did."
"Enough is enough," said Paul Marshall. "I see it as the tail is now wagging the dog."
There is a huge a huge difference between threatening to kill other students and playing "Marine and bad guy," just as children from previous generations played cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians..... they are children for heaven sake and if our public school teachers and school officials do not have the common sense or brains to tell the difference, perhaps they should not be teaching our nation's children, nor running our nation's public schools.
School Contact Information:
Principal
Melodie Griffin
4270 Driver Lane
Suffolk, Virginia 23435
Phone: 757.923.4106
Fax: 757.538.5407
Send Mail
Other recent examples of the idiocy that is running our public school systems across the country:
• New York Middle School Forces Girls To Kiss Each Other And Boys How To Identify 'Sluts'
• Albany High School Assignment: 'You Must Argue That Jews Are Evil'
• 8th Grade WV Student Arrested, Suspended For NRA 'Protect Your Right' Shirt- Why Wasn't Teacher Arrested?
• Tennessee Parents Questioning School Information Saying Terror List Groups Are 'Political Parties'
• Second-grader suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped the strawberry, pre-baked toaster pastry into something resembling a gun. WBFF, the FOX affiliate in Baltimore, broke the story.
• Parents furious after two 6-year-old boys were suspended for using fingers as guns.
• Students were required to design socialist flags.
• California School Punishes Students for Wearing “Racist” American Flag Bandanas and Chanting “USA” at Basketball Game
• Junior high teacher tells kid to remove Marines t-shirt or get suspended.
• "Actor Joseph C. Phillips: Teacher Threatened My Son, Questioned His Mental State Over Photo Of BB Gun
• Bullied Boy Dies, Bullies Get Two Day Suspension vs Student Disarms Gunman Gets Three Day Suspension
