The government’s monopoly education system is a travesty mostly because taxpayers spend record amounts of money and we get very poor results.
But I’m also irked at the way government schools engage in absurd displays of political correctness, particularly when it comes to make-believe weapons.
A little boy was suspended for throwing an imaginary grenade while playing by himself in Colorado.
A school wanted to force a deaf child to change his name because, when using sign language to say who he is, his fingers looked like a gun.
Speaking of which, a six-year old in Maryland was suspended for saying “pow” while having his fingers shaped like a gun.
All this sounds crazy, but at least school bureaucrats are consistent in their nuttiness. Not only are they against non-existent grenades and imaginary guns, they all have a zero-tolerance approach for bows and arrows that don’t exist.
Here are some of the details about what happened at a Pennsylvania school.
A ten-year-old boy has reportedly been suspended from school after he ‘fired’ an imaginary bow and arrow at another pupil. Johnny Jones, a fifth grader at South Eastern Middle School in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania, is said to have been suspended for one day after making the gesture and now faces expulsion. According to the Rutherford Institute, which is defending the youngster, Johnny was accused of breaching the school’s regulations on using weapons, even though the bow and arrow were not real. He was reprimanded after the girl he ‘fired’ the bow at notified a teacher.
It’s ridiculous that the little boy was suspended, but you also have to wonder about the mental stability of the little girls who ratted him out. Is she just a run-of-the-mill tattle tale? Or is she in training to become a tax bureaucrat in Chicago? Or maybe she went through training on how to be a snitch in the United Kingdom?
But we also have another story of political correctness run amok in government schools. Bureaucrats in Colorado have nabbed a sexual predator.
Are we talking about a 17-year old gang member who was raping and sexually assaulting other students.
Well…not quite. Here’s what Fox News is reporting.
A 6-year-old boy has been suspended from a Colorado school for kissing a girl on the cheek. School officials in Canon City are accusing the boy of sexual harassment and they want it on his school record. The boy’s mother tells KRDO-TV…the girl did not object to being kissed. She told the station that the two children like each other.
To be fair, maybe the boy is genuinely pestering the girl and – notwithstanding what his mother says – the attention is unwelcome. In that case, some punishment is warranted, particularly since it happened twice.
Though I’m not sure I would categorize it as sexual harassment. This is what makes this story worth sharing. It illustrates the lack of common sense that seems inevitable when bureaucrats are in charge of anything.
And since we’re talking about a lack of common sense, here are previous examples of school bureaucrats going overboard for political correctness.
- Bureaucrats suspended a little boy for taking bites out of a pop tart in such a way that it was shaped like a gun.
-
Bureaucrats busted a 5-year old girl in Pennsylvania for having a pink plastic gun that shoots bubbles.
- A teacher in Rhode Island caught an 8-year old boy with some plastic toy army men.
- Bureaucrats evacuated a school because an 11-year old boy made a motion detector for his science experiment.
- Bureaucrats in Florida kicked an 8-year old boy out of school for a year because he had a plastic gun in his backpack.
- A dual award in Virginia, with half the prize for the bureaucrats who suspended a 10-year old boy for a toy gun and half the prize for the cops who then arrested the kid.
- A third-grader got in trouble for having toy army men on his birthday cupcakes.
- Two second-graders got suspended for holding pencils like they were guns.
- Bureaucrats suspended a kindergartener for having a lego-sized toy gun.
- Bureaucrats suspended two boys for playing with toy guns while off school property.
You’ll notice that all these examples involved non-imaginary objects. Real toy guns. Real army men. Real pencils. Real motion detectors. Real Lego pieces.
Aren’t we lucky that government is there to protect us! Sort of the same way they protect us with regulations, as Dave Barry has explained.
[…] shared many stories of anti-gun political correctness in government schools (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). Makes me wonder whether that kind of nonsense is even more […]
[…] shared many stories of anti-gun political correctness in government schools (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). Makes me wonder whether that kind of nonsense is even more […]
[…] in the fight for firearms freedom, the news isn’t all positive. We continue to get jaw-dropping examples of anti-gun political correctness from government […]
[…] years ago, I would regularly share horror stories about innocent kids being abused by politically correct government school administrators who […]
[…] years ago, I would regularly share horror stories about innocent kids being abused by politically correct government school administrators who […]
[…] years ago, I would regularly share horror stories about innocent kids being abused by politically correct government school administrators who […]
[…] I’ve shared jaw-dropping reports of anti-gun political correctness in American schools, as well as a proposal to […]
[…] I’ve shared jaw-dropping reports of anti-gun political correctness in American schools, as well as a proposal to ban skinny models […]
[…] Moreover, it will probably require big reform to deal with the brainless types of political correctness that exist in government […]
[…] Moreover, it will probably require big reform to deal with the brainless types of political correctness that exist in government […]
[…] How could I forget all the examples of insane anti-gun political correctness in government […]
[…] How could I forget all the examples of insane anti-gun political correctness in government […]
[…] Moreover, it will probably require big reform to deal with the brainless types of political correctness that exist in government […]
[…] Moreover, it will probably require big reform to deal with the brainless types of political correctness that exist in government […]
[…] I’ve shared horror stories of anti-gun political correctness in […]
[…] but not least, don’t forget all the nutty – and often thuggish – examples of anti-gun political correctness in […]
[…] Shifting gears, remember our story about ten days ago featuring the little kid who was suspended from school for firing an imaginary bow and arrow? Well, […]
I think if one were to conduct a study of the behavior of bureaucrats, regardless of the agency, one would find that the lower level bureaucrats are not paid to think. In fact, they are paid to not think. They are paid to simply follow the rules. Thinking inevitably gets them in trouble with the higher-ups, because such higher-ups reserve the thinking duties for themselves. This is why the lower-level bureaucrats, whether in the education bureaucracy or the TSA bureaucracy, cannot distinguish between real weapons and toy or make-believe weapons.
.
The failure to, or refusal to, employ critical thinking on the job is the essence of being a bureaucrat. Innovation and risk-taking are not wanted and are, in fact, disdained. Critical thinkers are weeded out during the hiring process and if one somehow manages to slip through, the trait gets quickly flushed out of his or her system, or the thinker reads the writing on the wall and voluntarily leaves the lemmings for a better life.
.
Anyone who is suprised or amazed by the behavior Mr. Dan describes in this post simply does not understand the nature of bureaucracies.
Exhibiting such blatant breaches of reality makes those persons of authority definitively mentally ill, and they should be institutionalized. They are harmful to society, abusive toward children and damaging the educational system. Should they advance to higher levels of authority, their psychosis will wreck havoc in the adult society. LOCK THEM UP NOW ! !
It’s worse than political correctness; it’s blatant social engineering.
Social engineering on such a scale would be atypical of China under Chairman Mao.
It’s sad to see it happening in the US, and the absurd lengths to which educrats and Teachers are going.
This nonsense is the direct result of the determined shift from the transmission of knowledge in schools to schools being directed to target students’ values, attitudes, beliefs, and feelings. There are no barriers anymore to schools trying to socially engineer personalities.
Just read some of the literature surrounding Communities of Learners and then appreciate that the ASCD classifies who is now deemed to be an “effective” principal based on mandating CoL with fidelity. Whatever the resistance. It’s what makes administrators eligible for the lucrative promotions into the central office and teachers to more than double salaries overnight as an Assistant Principal.