While they are arresting seven-year-olds in New York, South Carolina schools are expelling a six-year-old girl for bringing her brother’s toy gun into school. We have been discussing the steady stream of absurd actions taken by school officials under “zero tolerance” policies. For a prior column, click here. This is yet another example. This little girl picked up her brother’s toy gun. Rather than call the parents into the school and reprimand the girl, these school officials chose to expel her from Alice Drive Elementary in Sumter, South Carolina. It is bizarre that Principal Sheree T. Boozer (right) could not simply see a child’s mistake for what it is.
Yet, officials insist “Sumter School District takes any potential threat very seriously.” That’s funny because if they wanted to be taken seriously, they would not be expelling six-year-old with toy guns. Instead, they look like tyrannical clowns.
Naomi McKinney grabbed her brother’s toy gun without telling her parents for show-and-tell. Her father was told by the principal that his daughter had shown up with “a gun” at school and would be expelled. When he got there, she pulled out a clear plastic gun.
The family has appealed in vain and has been told that Naomi cannot be in the car when they pick up their other children because she is presumably a danger to the other children.
She has now been out of school for a month and placed on “Administrative Homebased Services” where she is supposed to “receive services through the homebased (sic) teacher.”
She is not alone in being expelled for a toy gun.
As an attorney and an educator, I am furious to read such accounts. It makes a mockery out the school system and shows a virtually moronic enforcement of these policies. What these educators are doing is avoiding any requirement of personal judgment or thought. These abuses continue because principals and school officials face no discipline for abusing a child in this way. They teach the students a dangerous form of authoritarian learning with the imposition of senseless and arbitrary rules.
Source: WLTX
Darren:
I went to nursery school in the mid 60’s, I had 2 capguns and the holster to carry them. I wore them to the nursery school and they told me “real cowboys check their guns at the door to schools and churches”. So I did and quite willingly too.
There was totally no threat from a clear toy gun.
I agree most definitely with our professor’s prediction on the terrible lesson this teaches to children to accept arbitrary and authoritarian rule by officials.
This school is more like a prison than the elementary school I attended from the early 70’s. At that age I and probably most other boys usually carried pocket knives. In second grade I bought a realistic cap gun for another boy during our Christmas party and when the boy opened up the present he was overjoyed along with most of the other boys. I think the only thing the teacher would have said was not to fire the caps off in class.
There was never any thought that the pocket knives or the cap gun would have been used against another student any more than some kid would have walked into the janitor’s shop (which was always open) grabbed a chisel and attacked someone.
I wonder how the school administrators in these articles would like it if they were forced to live their own lives under the same draconian and arbitrary rules they force upon their students.
What a complete bunch of morons running that school district.
I too am glad my son is old enough to be out of the reach of these people.
When he was in 1st grade he took a box cutter to school because the teacher had asked them to bring in an empty cereal box and they were going to cut it up for a craft. He didn’t realize he was doing anything wrong, as he said “how else would I cut up a box?” since his father and I used box cutters for just that purpose.
They confiscated the cutter, told him he couldn’t bring that kind of thing to school, called us and told us what happened and that was that. If that happened today, I’d probably be headed to the police station to bail him out.
So sad. No child left behind indeed.
Bring a toy gun to school, get expelled.
Carry a loaded automatic weapon in the streets, or a shopping mall, it’s a “constitutional right”.
And Americans wonder why the rest of the world thinks the US is FUBAR.
On the surface it does seem excessive. However, I feel quite strongly than guns are a societal problem in the US that must be dealt with. A HUGE societal problem. Smoking cigarettes used to be a huge societal problem and so was drunk driving. Both needlessly took American lives when in fact many of those deaths were preventable. I don’t recall anyone suggesting the solution to either being more cigarettes or more alcohol. What was done was to have the death and destruction of these constantly in front of the American public so they became more aware of the insanity of continuing to smoke or drive drunk along with some new common sense regulations and restricitions. This, though a bit clumsy is a welcome part of re-educating Americans that we should have zero tolerance for guns in our society. If we can’t rid our society of guns with laws, I fully support using the facts as well as public humiliation to shame people away from them. Republicans vehemently opposed seat belts, OSHA, anti-smoking measures and now they uniformly oppose common sense background checks and a ban on assault weapons and high capacity clips. With that record, it’s pretty hard to understand why anyone would listen to a Republican on any issue, let alone such important ones as protecting Americans’ from harm and even death.
I love living in a culture that will toss a kid out of school for a toy gun, or even a pointed finger saying ‘bang bang’, but they will NOT arrest and lock up someone like the nutcase holding a five year old hostage —when he had a reputation of carrying real guns, terrorizing neighbors and killing animals. We can’t seem to get our priorities straight on real dangers vs political correctness. Alabama’s Mr. Dykes wouldn’t be sitting in his bunker with a child hostage IF he had been incarcerated after shooting at a neighbor and her child. Instead, he was left at liberty till a court date. Maybe we should let the school teachers determine who gets out on bail?
Onlooker from Troy,
Do you have any evidence that Europe has such problems? Please show and tell.
Is this a give it back in spades to the white devils?
We got a black President, so we’ze gonna fix whitey.
Not speaking as a racist, but don’t you think that 200+ years of slavery, and all the stuff since emancipation, might heve some deep-rooted effects?
Don’t you remember the video link posted here which let us here the discussion between a black history teacher in NC, saying to her HS ckass that they were not allowed to criticize Obama, because as she said, he is President? And nobody insults the President in my class. Their attempts to reason with her was met with blank no’s.
How do the parents explain this? How does a child not be traumatized in front of her classmates?
Everytime blacks look at each other in their different shades of brown, black, coffee, then somewhere they are reminded that somebody raped their maternal ancestors.
I truly do not understand why the US allows adults real guns, that can really kill people, but does not allow children toy guns, that are for play.
It is the wrong way around. Ban the real guns, allow the toys.
“I am furious to read such accounts.”
Ditto, and to the rest of that last paragraph. It’s really the stuff of parody; Onion-esque. And yet, here it is, in living color. Truly UFB
I’m quite glad that my sons are grown and out of the sights of these idiotic people; and lucky to never have been caught in the zero tolerance web during their schooling.
This nonsense is endemic here and in Europe. It’s just one symptom of how far off the path we’ve gone.
Dredd,
I was very patriotic in school….. I had a red, white and blue a$$….. I got my fare share of paddlings…. One for smoking cigarettes behind the gym…. Although we had a lounge to smoke it…. They frowned on weed…. But…. No one really did anything if you smoked it outside…..
… led not lead …
AY, yeah, I remember when I lead some of my homies on a diversion to a canyon, while on the annual school trip (they don’t do those any more).
We were way down deep at the bottom and found an incredibly huge frog near the stream.
On the last day of school I got a paddling in front of the class with a wicked paddle the teacher evidently carved himself with a knife.
No suspension, no expelling, just a little burnt rubber. 😉
School administrators are fightened senseless of taking the responsibility of making a decision. And, chances are, the local school board would fire the principal for doing anything other than marring this little girl for life.
I was thinking about this a few days ago….. When I was in school….. We used to make dice guns….. What else could a slide rule be used for if you had… A thumb tack….a rubber band….a die….. And a wooden slide rule?
The nuns loved the creativeness….. Until….. They got popped…… Then it was a change of habit……they confiscated…. But at the end of the day…. Returned just the slide rule…..
As a teacher I would call this situation a “teachable moment”. Sadly the school didn’t see it as such. I feel for Naomi and her family. I only hope that the decision will be reversed or that the school’s failure to provide her with the ability to, “receive services through the homebased (sic) teacher” will financially enrich her.
“The family has appealed in vain and has been told that Naomi cannot be in the car when they pick up their other children because she is presumably a danger to the other children.” -Jonathan Turely
…a danger to others. Sure she is.
Too many idiots in positions of authority. Tyrannical idiots.
“What these educators are doing is ..”
Educators?
Exhibit #587 presented by Mr. Turley on our dysfunctional education system and zero tolerance.