LOL Yeah, we all know how meticulous 6 year olds are about proper knife safety. If you have kids, please delegate all decision making about their safety to someone else.
EDIT: disclaimer: obviously zero tolerance is stupid and this kid got punished way more severely than necessary, but… dude.
One of a my former bosses sons died from a stab wound a little more than an inch and a half deep. He drowned in his own blood. Now, this wasn’t in school, but it was with a knife in a violent situation. But the point is, it doesn’t take much though.
I know someone would trot out the scissors or pen bullshit. Bringing a knife to school adds an additional layer of danger, given there’s the likelihood if uncaught by the teacher (with 30+ students seems likely) could end up on the playground. If kids are using sharp objects in projects they should be under adult supervision. It is not the same thing.
I don’t remember this, when I was 7ish, I beat a kid over the head with a lunch tray and choked him until other kids had to get an adult to pull me off him. If I had a knife, maybe I would have stabbed him and lived to be haunted by what I had done.
Well I don’t. Can someone explain it to me?
At some point (way above spork level) the real danger is the INTENT of individuals to harm. The tools become irrelevant. When a “weapon” is no more dangerous than a common item, the solution is to address intent, not tools.
People can die from getting punched, I think it’s time to have kids always wear big giant puffy gloves. Or… we could adress violent intent.
So, if a kid put a classroom pen or craft scissors from a “supervised” project into their pocket and carried it to the playground- bam, suspension and expulsion?
As to your story, good thing you had a lunch tray instead of a pen, eh? Cause then, you could have stabbed him just as well with the pen as with a spork.
As stated upthread, the intent is for school administrators to not have to make decisions for themselves. Luckily these administrators have the panicky BUT THINK OF THE CHIIIILDREN crowd in the PTA helping them push these rules through to save their little angels them the hellspawn of all the other parents.
Some kid accidentally stabbing himself/someone else seems far more likely than deliberate violence IMO, but either way the school obviously has a strong interest in avoiding the type of liability incurred by letting a 6 year old run around with a knife unsupervised, whether we judge that knife to be sharp or not based on unrelated anecdotes from our youth.
Obligatory: zero tolerance policies are short sighted, and obviously it doesn’t make much sense to punish a 6 year old for poor parental judgment.
The intent of a zero tolerance law is not to protect the covered, but to remove liability for the enforcers. This way no one can pick their favorite “-ism” and cry out how unfairly they are being treated.
No, the tools don’t become irrelevant when they are an unknown. I’ve already addressed this, but there’s probably more potential of accident with it than the kid intentionally stabbing someone with it.
As to your story, good thing you had a lunch tray instead of a pen, eh? Cause then, you could have stabbed him just as well with the pen as with a spork.
Why are you being so wacky? Look at the picture in the article, it wasn’t a spork. It was a flip out fork, knife, and spoon. It looks a bit sharper than a butter knife to me in that picture, but it’s hard to tell.
And again, let me reiterate, I wholly agree that punishment far exceeds what’s called for here, but bringing unaccounted for knives on campus should be taken seriously. It’s not just note passing or whatever else you guys want to call it.
I’ve made this refrain about other bureaucracies before, but the real reason you see a lot of absurdities like this is they have no interest in avoiding false positives, leading to gross inefficiency. Why reform when there’s no downside other than some rare and easily-deflected criticism? They’re used to that!
EDIT: disclaimer: obviously zero tolerance is stupid and this kid got punished way more severely than necessary, but… dude.
Dude. It’s a spork.
This. Total agreement. Given the kids age, the fact that it was a cub scout eating utensil and not some hunting knife or other obvious danger to himself or other students, and the intent behind his bringing it to school (he wanted to use the fork to eat lunch with) it should have been a note home to the parents, end of story.
If we take away the abilty of administrators to make judgement calls in cases like this, then we are subjecting our children to a different kind of harm than the kind the rules and regulations were meant to protect them from in the first place. Obviously kids should not be allowed to bring weapons into schools, even pocket knives and kitchen knives from home. And yet, do we really need Zero Tolerance kickers to these rules? What does that teach children? Never trust authority because even in the face of common sense authority will stubbornly refuse to do the right thing? That’s great.
I understand that the administrator in this case and others like it are simply protecting themselves and the school systems the work for. In today’s litigation happy society, if someone’s kid brings in a picket knife and you don’t crack down on them like the Inquisition, it gets back to some parents or community activists and suddenly you’re under fire for treating some kids differently than others. Zero Tolerance isn’t about treating everyone the same to prevent another Columbine, it’s about treating everyone the same to prevent litigation and protect the school system in the event someone actually exercises some common sense and someone else takes offense to it.
Ya, a real spork there.
Scouts knives are not the fucking plastic knife your mommy gave you to go with your tea-set when you were a little girl, buddy, they are dangerous, and not “remotely” so.
EDIT: Background: I had a friend in grade 3 or 4 sever his own finger almost completely from his hand on a pocket knife he brought in to school.
I agree completely.
I’m underestimating the value of teaching moments like that. More zero tolerance policies, please!
Scouts knives are not the fucking plastic knife your mommy gave you to go with your tea-set when you were a little girl, buddy, they are dangerous, and not “remotely” so.
Buddy? OK, chief.
Anyway, if you believe a 6 year old with a dull flip out camping knife is a serious threat to those around him or to himself, you’re insane.
Does that actually look more dangerous to you than a pair of craft scissors? Really?
What if the kid brought in a 6-inch long flathead screwdriver? I can gurantee you I’d rather have that in a fight then the spork. But hey, screwdriver isn’t a knife, right?
The whole point is you see the word “knife” and all of the sudden they’re all equal. No, they’re not. There has to be at a least a degree of reason and decision-making involved.
That makes no sense. If the issue is not liability and the goal is efficiency, the obviously correct course of action is to just let the student population carry around knives at will. The part you quoted was intended to address weapon policies, not zero tolerance policies, that latter of which I’m opposed to, as I disclaimed. There seem to be a number of people that think it’s perfectly OK for kids of all ages to have knives at school, which I might diplomatically call short-sighted.
Yeah, the seriousness this should be taken with is mostly to prevent accidents, not necessarily the next Columbine. Even in my case, it’s likely I would have seriously hurt only one person.
It was a serious transgression (even if by accident) and should be treated as such, not dismissed as not a big deal.
Speaking of that picture, when did photographers perfect the glancing away look for upset-citizen human interest stories? That shit is more tired than zero tolerance.
And LesJarvis, you’re right that I misread you, so insert a generic zero tolerance argument into that quote instead. :)
Yeah, I can’t really think of a good rationale for the “zero tolerance” part of a prohibition. There can be many kinds of extenuating circumstances, and good judgement is key. In theory, I think “zero tolerance” is a misguided attempt to avoid favoritism and corruption, but honestly, its a cure far worse than the disease. I would rather have a little bit of occasional cronyism as a part of individual judgement than the sort of foolish consistency shown here.