Underreacting

These stories about kids getting suspended for "gun" related incidents will eventually cause my head to explode. It's always the same story - kid brings an innocuous gun-related toy to school, or points his finger, or makes a weapon related sound of some sort, kid gets suspended, kid's parents express shock at the school's "overreaction", parents tell kid it's ok, story ends. Different schools, different kids, different day, different parents (though hard to tell by their reactions), same story.

Today's story is about some middle school boys that ran afoul of "the man" for getting carried away with nerf guns prior to school. A teacher told them it was ok to bring the nerf guns for some class related activity, and the 12 year old boys decided to play with them before school. Shocking, I know. The whole story can be found at this link -> Link to whole story.

It is frustrating, and sad that the message is really not getting out about this national phenomenon taking place in our education system. The mother in this story could be the mother in any number of these stories. She acknowledges that the school policy requires some punishment, but thinks that the suspension and entry into her son's permanent record are overly severe for what he did. The problem is that she doesn't understand what it is that  her son is guilty of, or even what she herself is guilty of. The problem isn't that her son brought the wrong type of toy to school. The problem is that she and her son don't hold the proper view about the evils of toy guns. These examples are extremely educational for school children.

As has been pointed out on the "Reeducating a generation" page of this blog, these incidents are taking place with increasing frequency in schools throughout America. Shock and dismay at the overreaction of school administrators is the wrong response. Outrage over these attempts at coercive, ideologically motivated, behavioral modification is the right response. Our representatives should be taking the lead against these attempts to indoctrinate a generation of Americans into giving up their gun rights. Unfortunately, there is no significant effort being made to confront this abuse of authority.

A transition needs to take place. The dismay of one parent must become the outrage of many parents. Until the consequences for school administrators that abuse our trust, and our children, become greater than the consequences for a 5 year old making a finger gun at school, this problem will only get worse. The schools were very effective in indoctrinating a generation of children against cigarette smoking. Think what we may about changing views about smoking, we should not kid ourselves into thinking that these new efforts will not succeed in convincing the next generation to eventually surrender their second amendment rights.

Note: We didn't get through the day without another example. An 11 year old was suspended for 10 days in Calvert County Maryland for "talking about guns".  He was questioned by the principle and a Sheriff's deputy who also wanted to search the boys home without a warrant. See the reeducating a generation page for more details and a link to the story.