The New York Times (October 11, 2009)
"Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother's fiancé by his side to vouch for him.
"Zachary's offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district's reform school...."
(by Mustafah Abdulaziz for The New York Times, used w/o permission)
I hate to think what will happen when the Newark school system administrators discover the weapons potential of human teeth and fingernails.
It's not just Newark, of course. After Columbine and other school killings, "zero-tolerance" became a wonderful way for people in leadership positions to 'solve the problem.' So, teachers who are either as ditsy as the administrators or who want to keep their jobs turn in dangerous thugs like Zachary.
Eventually, I suppose that enough Americans will get fed up with this particular sort of nonsense.
(As I've been explaining quite often lately, the Lemming is "apathetic" only in the sense that I don't care intensely about the, ah, correct things. Kids being sent to reform school for carrying a big, bad camping utensil: that I care about.
Which reminds me of an incident, quite a few years ago, involving the local school, a skunk, a wood pile and some dynamite.
A tip of the hat to irish_brigid, on Twitter, for the heads-up on this.
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