A student was charged with a few misdemeanors for using what appears to me to look like a pen for shooting spitball-like objects:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/01/AR2011020104097.htmlWow, we used to do that riding the bus to school. I remember that some kids would take an ear of corn from the farmer's field and we would use straws or maybe pen casings to shoot kernels at each other. Those things hurt much more than saliva-soaked wads of paper! But I would hardly call it criminal.
Given the lack of parental oversight of the average child anymore schools are more and more turning to the criminal code to punish disciplinary infractions. What used to be a call to parents and detention is now criminalized because calling parents does not generally achieve anything. I blame it on parents wanting to be their kids friends instead of their parents. I know a guy whose children address him and his wife by their first name and have no problems ignoring what their parents tell them to do. I read a piece the other day about a kid getting a $500 fine for swearing in school and of course their are the ever present cases of children charged with sexual assault for grabbing a girls rear or just consensual kissing.Sadly, I think it is just another sign that society is changing, and not always for the better.
It's amazing that schools will go hyper in punishing students for minor infractions, yet they pay money to have toxic levels of ideology permeate their classrooms.
It's amazing that schools will go hyper in punishing students for minor infractions, yet they pay money to have toxic levels of ideology permeate their classrooms.
They dont see the irony and defintiely do not see the linkage. I dont blame teachers and lower administrators so much as legislators and federal bureaucrats.