Expelled, sounds like something you want to do with a glob of saliva, huh?
No harm, no foul.
I heard it the other way today, the one that isn't just about getting rid of the phlegm.
While going to the local high school to swim my laps - 2 and a half miles worth - I ran into a lady ... well, not ran into ... more like occasioned into her, and she told me about her teenaged son, who had been suspended from high school for the last eight days.
His crime? He was caught in school with a four inch pen knife.
Next Wednesday, he and his mother will be at the school to learn his fate.
She was raging about how unfair it is, about how her taxes give her the right to send her kid to this school, about how unfair it would be if they send him to an 'alternative' school, about how they should have had metal detectors.
To tell the truth, it didn't ring true to me. Yes, it's harsh to expel a student for having a penknife, but a four inch penknife is actually a fairly large knife. Is there an innocent reason for having one in school. Maybe, but not a necessary reason for having one.
She said he didn't know he had the knife on him. It was clipped to pants he had worn the day before. Sorry, but I don't buy this either. He would have seen it.
In my opinion, he knowingly went to school with a knife, flaunting all of the admittedly overprotective measures the schools have been forced to take due to Columbine and other places.
I wish he hadn't done it. I'm sure he wishes the same. But he did, and, unfortunately, it will all be up to the school administration. I for one won't fault them if they expel him. On the other hand, I won't fault them if they impose some other kind of punishment.
In my upcoming book Fang Face, administrators face somewhat the same dilemma: do they allow a teenaged vampire to go to school with the other students?
Fang Face, just six months away!
Norm
I have zero tolerance for this. Kids know better. And what is the parent allowing a kid to carry a knife for anyway? I think he should get an education, but not at the expense of the other kid's safety. Why does he need to carry a knife to school, okay, it was on his pants from the day before. This begs the questions, did he go to school the day before?
ReplyDeleteExpulsion and not of a loogey is the only option. Let the mother educate him if she isn't afraid of her son carrying a knife.
http://karensyed.blogspot.com
I'm with Karen about the zero tolerance thing. We had an incident like this at my high school last year. This kid (who was officially somewhat psychotic) took a knife about the same size and was flipping it around in his keyboarding class. He freaked out a girl sitting next to him, who reported it to the teacher, who reported to administration, who voted to expel him.
ReplyDeleteI don't think he was allowed back to the school for this current school year. In other words, 4" knife=lifetime expulsion from my school.
And I really don't buy the whole "clipped to pants from the day before" thing. Totally dumb.