Home Economics Hystrionics Class
Have Zero Tolerance Policies Gone Too Far?
This is such a basic bit of common sense that I’m astounded anew every time I read that people don’t understand it. Grouping every offender of a class of violations together and forcing mandatory harsh punishments on the entire class cannot help but lead to abusive and manifestly unfair punishments. Coupled with hysterical definitions, these policies are a recipe for the absolutely outrageous.
Jacob Finklea, 12, was expelled for bringing scissors to his sewing class at Lincoln Middle School in Pike Township.
“I put them on the desk because she said, ‘Get all your supplies ready to make the pillows,’ and I put the scissors on the desk and she just freaked out,” Jacob said.
Jacob’s mother, Chrystal Finklea, is upset with the school rules that say scissors are a weapon requiring up to a two-semester expulsion.
“They were making pillows and the scissors he had hurt his hands. So when he went back to school he took my sewing scissors to school so he could finish making his pillow,” Finklea said. “It’s been a complete nightmare, It’s been a nightmare for both of us.”
Scissors, in Home Economics class, are a weapon and posession of them requires expulsion? We’ve gone from “Don’t run with scissors in your hand” to “You can’t come to school if you use scissors”. Scissors are not a weapon. They are a tool, just like a chair or a pencil or a pointer or the cord from the window blinds. All of them have proper uses and all of them can be used to hurt another person. In fact, can you think of any common scholastic item that can’t be used to hurt somebody?
So what is there for the Finkleas to do? Jacob has been expelled from his school for bringing fabric scissors in to cut his fabric.
Pike Township school officials wouldn’t go on camera, but in a written statement officials said it is their policy to “vigorously enforce the prohibition of weapons or assumed weapons in the possession of any individual.”
Finklea said she has contacted several schools to see if they’ll teach her son, but the word “weapon” on his record has deterred many schools from even meeting with her, Weaver reported.
Congratulations, Pike Township. Your vigorous enforcement of a prohibition against an assumed weapon has marked this student for the rest of his scholastic life.
So just what the hell are the students supposed to use to cut the fabric? Did they have those little plastic “scisor” things we used in first grade? Rediculous. Were I in school now, I would lobby to make pencils and markers illegal because you could stab someone or give someone brain damage with them respectively. Grrr. I just wonder how bad things will be by the time I have kids.
Tommy.
From the article we can infer that the class was using those safety scissors that never work. The student brought in his mother’s fabric scissors because he had difficulty cutting the fabric with the “safe” scissors.
I see straight thinking there - identify the problem, determine a solution, implement solution. The school sees deadly intent.
My comments on this article appear at http://www.myshortpencil.com/schooltalk/cgi-bin/show.cgi?tpc=2&post=8940#POST8940
Don’t run from scissors
ZeroIntelligence and MyShortPencil are all over this one - there’s not much I can add. The only saving grace is that this particular tale of zero-tolerance idiocy is featured in an article entitled, “Have Zero Tolerance Policies Gone Too Far?”…
Lets play a round of “Spot the Moron” with this article, shall we? Despite your first impulse, it’s not the teacher in the article, although she’s certainly no genius. No, it’s the person who said this:
“There’s something going on in that child’s life if they’re going to be using alcohol or drugs to that extent, that early in the morning, something’s wrong.”
So… it’s okay if the children are just a little tipsy ’round lunchtime, Mr. Superintendent? What an idiot. And to make matters worse, he’s in a political position, where he knows (or should know) that everything he says will be quoted.
Apathy, you’re deconstructing that sentence way too much. Calm down.
Wonder what they use to cut food in the Home Eco. cooking class? (assuming such a class still exists!)
And to think that when I was in High School, there was a rifle club and I used to bring my own rifle !
Argghh, Zero Tolerance Policies
These are just the thing that administrators like so that their jobs will not require any thinking (never mind the possibility of creative thinking). In reference to a case where a 12 year old was expelled for bringing his own scissors to a sewing clas…
Harvey stated that he used to belong to the rifle club at school and brought his own rifle, now look at the state of education, the student can hardly read, there must be some connection. We were living the seeds of our destruction, if only we knew.
Next I suppose they will force amputation of thumbs so no one will be able to make finger guns!
Okay, let’s assume for a minute (I know - very dangerous thing to do with regards to schooling) that it wasn’t those lame safety scissors that 4 year olds attempt to use to cut paper. There is ABSOLUTELY no way those would cut fabric so they must have alternate shears available for the sewing class that would have a blade sharp enough to cut through fabric. Since the student bringing his mom’s scissors to school was expelled for bringing a weapon to school, does this mean that if a student were to attack another student with one of the school-supplied pair of scissors that the school, school board, teacher, et al. would also be charged as an accessory in the attack? After all, they provided the weapon…
Forget the scissors, what about the protractors?! Those are deadly weapons without a doubt. Or are there “safety protractors” available?
I wonder how they justify woodshop or metal shop? Saws, blades, awls, screwdrivers, metal rulers - all weapons in the hands of children.
A girl in my high school class hit a guy on the side of the head with a textbook. He was not knocked out, but his neck was hurt and he missed two days of class and wore a brace for a week or so. So, does it follow that people who bring books to school should be suspended?
Anyway, this case of the home-ec guy bringing his own scissors may have more facts than have been disclosed - for privacy issues of the students involved. Maybe he had an attitude or a history that imbued the facts with different meanings to the people in a position to know. Are they really arbitrarily trashing someone’s young life or do they believe they have reason to take steps - to prevent a tragedy?
Sorry to take the fun out of this.
Finklea said Jacob excelled in elementary school but has had trouble transitioning to Lincoln Middle School, including a suspension during the first semester for bad behavior. Finklea said her son was targeted by bullies and was forced to defend himself. Jacob’s counselor, teachers and pastor testified on his behalf at his expulsion hearing, to no avail.
It’s unclear if the mention of Jacob’s supporters applied to the earlier problem or the current scissor incident.
So Jacob did indeed have a previous history. Even if that history had been severely delinquent though, does that justify expelling a child for bringing scissors to sewing class? He was not trying to hide them or use them inappropriately. He just wanted to cut the fabric for his pillow.
Uncompromising Carnival!
The 77th Carnival of the Vanities is up at Aaron’s Rantblog. Many gems, (which I am not so arrogant as to say includes my own offering, “Blood and Guts”) but here are some of my favorites: Solomon’s post about “media-manufactured…
Our United States Public Schools are being run like organized crime. Complete with family bosses and soldiers.
School districts are kept in “the family” with the intermarriages of the powers that be very simiar to the feudal plantations of the Dark Ages. And we are in the Dark Ages right now. Our education system is obsolete with the Old Guard (Corruption) hanging on for dear life. One of the things going on in education right now are the Administrator Owned Educational Consultant Firms: (the equivilant of Doctors owning Radiology, MRI, and Mammography Labs.)
Superintendent’s are screaming about how the teachers are unqualified to teach. The Superintendents then get the State Dept. Of Education to use taxpayers money to pay for these Administrator Owned Educational Consultant Firms to come in as faculty development, to teach teachers how to read, write, and do arithmatic. The taxpayers think the Administrators are addressing the problem of low test scores in the district. It is really all about making money. The same way the mafia keeps their own neighborhood clean, but run drug and prostitution rings in other neighborhoods. Our Schools are going down the drain.
A person with guts and perseverance needs to crack this thing wide open. You will be fighting city hall, the NEA, and my guess is the US Dept. of Education as well.
Read teacher stories at this website http://www.endteacherabuse.info/
I actually attended school in this township. This seems just about standard for them. They were, to put it in a nutshell, simply paranoid about stuff. I’m honestly surprised Pike Township hasn’t been in the news more for this stuff.