As the calendar turns to August, many parents are starting the annual check of school supply lists, bus routes, and lunch packing routines. However, some parents might be wondering whether the lunch or school supplies they send with their child might become a disciplinary issue.
Reports have recently surfaced that a Georgia six-year-old was suspended last spring after reportedly biting his sandwich into an “L shape” and pointing it at another student. The student “was previously suspended for pointing a bottle of water at another student and making gun noises and also punished for drawing a pilgrim shooting a turkey … .”
The child’s family argues that the punishment ignores the child’s age and autism which reflects how some school policies can lose sight of common sense. Certainly, expecting a six-year-old autistic child to grasp any complex implications of pointing his “L-shaped sandwich” at another student as he is still learning the difference between imaginative play and real world is absurd. It’s also precisely why our society doesn’t prosecute six-year-old children.
This isn’t a first-of-its kind report, unfortunately. In recent years, schools have made headlines after students faced disciplinary consequences for gun-shaped food items or toys.
Recall that a Maryland seven-year-old was suspended for allegedly biting his breakfast pastry into a firearm shape while at school. A five-year old in Pennsylvania was suspended for bringing a Hello Kitty bubblegun to school. And in perhaps the nadir of these accounts, a 3-year-old deaf boy named Hunter was told by his school that signing his own name was a violation of the school district’s “weapons” policy.
While school administrators unquestionably have an important responsibility to assess genuine threats and address disruptive behavior, this necessarily involves the use of sound judgement in distinguishing between serious safety issues and innocent childhood behavior.
The concerns extend beyond isolated incidents and even beyond the classroom. Administrators appear to be treating imagination as suspect, reflecting a broader cultural tendency to view even an imaginary reference to firearms as inherently dangerous. That mindset matters in reinforcing notions that any association with firearms or hunting, even when rooted in innocent childhood play, artwork, or family tradition, should be viewed negatively. A young child drawing a pilgrim hunting a turkey with a firearm simply should not be marked for the record as a safety concern or behavioral issue.
The parents of the Georgia six-year-old weren’t only baffled by their first grader’s suspension but also noted that the young child is now internalizing the school’s overreaction. “There were definitely times when he would come home and say, ‘I’m a bad kid’ and that’s really hard to hear as a mom,” the boy’s mother told a media outlet. School administrators, more than anyone, should understand that children at that age are still developing their ability to understand abstract concepts, and there is a danger in stigmatizing versus teaching in those moments.
Headlines like these have unfortunately become a predictable aspect of the back-to-school tradition. What they point to is the need for policies grounded in reality rather than symbolic gestures. NRA has pursued such reforms through a variety of means, from grant programs to improve the safety infrastructure of schools to so-called Pop-Tart Bills that give school officials more flexibility in responding to supposed violations of weapons polices posing no risk of harm.
For children’s sake, the best lesson schools can teach is that not every deviation from opaque bureaucratic dictates deserves harsh punishment and that common sense can be an indispensable part of education. Unfortunately, many of America’s schools are still a long way off from learning even that elementary lesson.
Here’s the thing about [left winger] school administrators and teachers – their goal is to take it out on the children. Sure, they cloak it in things like ‘policy’ and ‘caring’ wording, but their overall unspoken goal is to make the children suffer in some way. Everything from like that outlined in this article to gender ideology and more. Let children be children, they are already basically confined for several hours a day at a school and its natural for children to want to do something to put a little fun in their day under such a condition. And I’m pretty sure no one was ever actually shot by a pop-tart or a deaf kids fingers signing out the letters to his own name. But to these school administrators and teachers its such an egregious sin the kid must be ‘punished’ and their self-esteem destroyed to make them ‘comply’ with the ‘power and authority’ to do such these school administrators and teachers have bestowed upon them selves under a protective banner of ‘policy’. What will they do next – maybe when a kid with a banana for a snack pulls it out and goes ‘bang bang’ they will be dialing 911 to report a ‘school shooter’ and a swat team ends up gunning down a 6 year old child because a school administrator claims it was a ‘gun’.
Been working in public schools for quite some time and context should be everything. Fortunately, my county leans slightly conservative!
The leftist takeover of the teachers’ unions and public education is one of the most serious problems we face. This was and is a deliberate move by the left attempting to undermine and subvert American education and culture in general. The importance of addressing this problem cannot be overstated.
Nailed it. It’s part of a long term (from the 1950’s) strategy to take over education and change American culture. It started in elite universities and has now percolated its way firmly into public education and media. It’s been so slowly implemented over multiple generations that most educators and administrators aren’t even aware of their own level of indoctrination and loss of critical thinking skills (frog in the boiling pot). Marxism embraces “Critical Theory” (CRT is an extension). It states that everyone is either an “oppressor” or the “oppressed” based on certain inherent characteristics the individual may or may not be aware of or have any control over. And there are varying degrees of each (we call that “intersectionality” now). It’s designed to Divide…Enrage…Instigate…seeding clouds of victimhood and creating social unrest and chaos that big brother government must eventually step in to control…leveling the playing field and bringing “equity” to all. They see it as the ultimate utopia. In reality it’s dystopian, contrary to human nature, and has never nor ever will work. It’s un-American, anti Christian and anti humanitarian. In short, it’s evil. And it’s being taught in the sociology, psychology, education, liberal arts, cultural studies and many other departments of most universities.