I keep seeing more and more news items like this one, http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/-two-boys-suspended-for-pointing-pencils-like-guns-165811733.html.
I just don't understand what is wrong with people? It's reading articles like this that make me want to just home school my kids when the time comes. This really comes down to the question: why are schools being so hard on kids just playing and having fun.
How ridiculous can schools and their policies get. Every single kid, at one point in their life, has taken a random, every day object and used it as a "gun." Schools and parents (and yes, even some teachers) seem to be getting more paranoid about kids being kids. If they were not being malicious and were only playing between the two of them why the HECK would they get suspended?
I can get if they were in trouble for threatening to shoot someone, or for bullying others. But for just playing a pretend game with one another that is not at all harmful to anyone physically, mentally, or emotionally is just plain dumb. And to suspend the 7 year old, yes 7 years old, from school is just STUPID! If the school felt it needed to punish the kids then start with something small like detention or some kind of essay writing assignment, don't just jump ahead and suspend them.
I just imagine what the rules for school will be like by the time I have kids:
- no playing like your shooting or stabbing at others: as this will make others believe you are a dangerous criminal
- no using objects of any kind as a weapon: the object will be confiscated, if you used your fingers as a gun those will be cut off and confiscated as well
- no running: only criminals have a reason to run
- no yelling: only abusers yell
- no laughing: only bullies laugh at others, and when you are laughing we must assume it is at someone else and therefore bullying
- no sneezing: this leads to others to say "Bless you" which is shortened from "God bless you." There is not religion allowed in school
What a sad state our country is in and I don't see it getting better any time soon.
