When I saw this story on the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web, all I could think about is staging a contest between education bureaucrats are TSA bureaucrats to see which group should symbolize the inherent incompetence of the public sector:
Patrick Timoney, a fourth-grader at PS 52, South Beach, was nearly suspended after playing with LEGOs during his lunch period because one of the action figures was carrying at toy machine gun. He and his friends had planned a playdate with their respective toys, and were sitting around the cafeteria table when the principal walked in and saw the action figure carrying the fake gun. While the action figure was a standard LEGO policeman figure, the brand of the gun could not be determined. “She took him into her office in the middle of the lunch period and he was crying,” said the boy’s mother, Laura Timoney. “He was afraid.” The principal called Ms. Timoney and said she considered the toy suspension-worthy, and that she was going to double-check with a security administrator from the city Department of Education. According to Ms. Timoney, the administrator said the toy should be confiscated and returned to the parents at the end of the day, and that no other action was necessary. …She pointed out that another child had an action figure that was holding an ax, but that only Patrick was reprimanded.
The end is nigh.
And people wonder why our education system is in disarray.
This was a Principal using horrid judgement, not a run-of-the-mill teacher or lunch aide.
Fortunately someone in the school district had some common sense.
I don’t think this is stupidity. It is an intentional attempt to politically indoctrinate the children and to program their behavior as well.
I agree with Mark, this sort of thing has already resulted in a generation of Americans who are conditioned to view inanimate weapons as inherently evil and detestful. This makes for a much more subdued flock of sheeple.