From the New York Times: In New Jersey, two second graders in Irvington were suspended and charged with making terroristic (sic) threats last week after pointing a paper gun, in what they said was a game of cops and robbers. In Jonesboro, Ark., an 8-year-old was suspended for three days for pointing a breaded chicken finger at a teacher and saying "Pow, pow, pow."
What kind of insane people are running America's schools? A second grader is about 7 years old. Seven-year-olds, unlike most adults, so it seems, have an imagination that is not limited by constricted prurient inhibitions. Everything they see or hear is raw material for play. Arrest them!
A few years ago, a kindergarten student was charged with "sexual harassment" for kissing a classmate. What kind of insane world do we live in? What kind of people sit at their desks with serious expressions on their faces and pronounce that this child is a danger to the community and must be stopped? What kind of complete idiot thinks that this kind of "zero tolerance" is going to have any effect whatsoever on the number of school shootings or assaults we have in our society?
Isn't it obvious? When a seven-year-old is arrested or suspended for making "threats", aren't we in fact contributing to the aura of power and importance that disturbed, potentially violent misfits are looking for?
On the other hand, someone with a brain lives in Fort Huron, Michigan. When some students made a threat (of dubious sincerity) to bomb the school two years ago, instead of installing metal detectors and banning back-packs, the school decided to have the principal and teachers sit down and have lunch with students and parents at least once a month. This won't guarantee that there won't be any incidents, but I'll bet it makes for a better school and school community.
There's something else to keep in mind. Almost every media outlet refers to a "rash" or school shootings, or the "increasing" violence in the classroom, or the "epidemic" number of sexual assaults. Why? Do you, the naive reader, assume that they have conducted research and produced some rational analysis that actually shows that there is a "rash" of anything, other than the itch to sensationalize and pander to a kind of hysterical paranoia in our society?
We have a little-understood impulse, within ourselves, to want to believe the worst of others. I think it is rooted in the desire to believe in ourselves, that we are good, honorable, lovable people-- because they are not. It's a basic human impulse. It's why we have to believe that a five-year-old that kisses a fellow student is some kind of pervert. It's because we are the sick ones who believe that a kiss between children can be perverse.
