Chandler boy suspended for sketching gun (thanks to Bob Chambers for this one….)
An East Valley eighth-grader was suspended this week after he turned in homework with a sketch that school officials said resembled a gun and posed a threat to his classmates. But parents of the 13-year-old, who attends Payne Junior High School in the Chandler Unified School District, said the drawing was a harmless doodle of a fake laser, and school officials overreacted…. “I just can’t believe that there wasn’t another way to resolve this,” said Paula Mosteller, the boy’s mother. “He’s so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good.”…. Payne Junior High officials did not allow the Tribune to view the drawing. The Mostellers said the drawing did not depict blood, injuries, bullets or any human targets. They said it was just a drawing that resembled a gun. But Payne Junior High administrators determined that was enough to constitute a gun threat and gave the boy a five-day suspension that was later reduced to three days.
I’m all for the idea of “zero tolerance”…to a point. When “zero tolerance” becomes code for “zero common sense”…well, that’s where I draw the line…and if this story isn’t indicative of “zero common sense”, I don’t know what is.
Have we become so jumpy, so frightened of even the barest hint of violence that we’re willing to countenance a system in which school administrator are allowed to mete out unreasonable punishment to otherwise innocent children simply because they want to be “nervous nellies”? Apparently so. Welcome to our public school system, where simple common sense seems to have been banished because it…well, because it just makes too damn much sense.
If someone can explain to me how doodling in the margins of a paper because a student finished an assignment early is a step on the road to Columbine II, I’m all ears. What we’re talking about is a bored teenager boy killing time because he finished an assignment early. Had his teachers noticed anything alarming about the boy’s behavior previously? Is he socially well-adjusted? Aren’t there ways that teachers and adminstrators can reasonably determine whether or not a child presents a possible risk to the safety of those around him? Of course there are; it’s just far easier to panic and react as if even the barest intimation of anything symbolizing violence should be taken that Columbine II is nigh.
I’m not about to minimize the threat of random school violence. No one wants to see Columbine revisited again. Even so, does that mean school administrators need to be living in mortal fear of any thought, deed, or doodle that might possibly somehow be construed as indicative of a violent personality? Of course not. Students doodling in the margin of a science assignment are not the problem here. Then again, if you (over)react to everything, no matter how small and seemingly inane and innocent, you shouldn’t miss anything…right?
No one wants to see a Columbine-style massacre visited upon their school, but neither should anyone want their chlid going to a school where the administration has completely taken leave of it’s collective sense. Isn’t it time we all got a grip?? Yes, it is….
