How Can They Teach Students To Think . . . (Updated) 0

. . . when they can’t think for themselves?

Granted, a six-year old should not be trucking around unsupervised with a Boy Scout knife, even if it’s just because he’s excited about joining the Tiger Cubs. At the same time, divining someone’s intent without taking into account behavior, but only from measuring the size of the knife, is really dumb.

It would not be allowed in criminal court; that’s why there is a difference between “involuntary manslaughter” and “first degree murder.” But schools know not due process.

It is typical of many policies in schools and in other organizations, private and public. It relieves the persons who are paid the middle-sized bucks to make the middle-sized decisions from having to, well, decide and then be held accountable for their decisions. (The rule was made so arbitrary because administrators were making bad decisions. Easier than expecting them to make good ones.)

Because the district’s Student Code of Conduct bans dangerous instruments regardless of intent, the district could not take into consideration Zachary’s age or why he brought the camping utensil to school, said Wendy Lapham, the district’s spokeswoman.

“We have to follow the policy as it is written consistently because this is the code of conduct that is applied to all of our students in our district,” she said. “It’s never a question of a child’s character or comparing one child to another.”

The sophistry is mind-numbing. I guess the rules sprang full-blown from the mind of Zeus and are therefore immutable.

This is the same school district where a woman sent her grandchild to school with a birthday cake with a cake knife in the cake box. The teacher cut the cake with the cake knife, then turned the girl in; the student was suspended for having a “deadly weapon” because the cake knife was longer than three inches. (The suspension was later suspended in a technicality: facing protests, the district ruled that, since the cake knife was in the cake box, the student never actually had possession of it.)

Have cake, eat it too.

(Interestingly, the Wilmington paper, link above, refers to that cake knife as a “serrated knife.” Cake knives are indeed serrated; they are just not sharp. There’s a picture of a deadly cake knife here. As a weapon, it makes a nice baton.)

Comic relief: Read the comments following the article; it’s pretty easy to identify the “lock ’em up for life for jaywalking” crowd.

Full disclosure: I used to know someone who worked in that school district. It wasn’t too much better from the inside.

Addendum:

They’ve amended the reg, but added discretion in not part of the amendment.