I'm wondering if he carried the silverware set to school because he's merely excited about going to Cub Scouts, or if his scout meeting was right after school.

When I went to school, kids who were members of the Boy Scouts often wore their uniforms to school. I never asked why, but presumably, they had Scout meetings immediately after school.

In any case, this is ridiculous. There is no discretionary power at all and an obviously well-meaning and well-behaved child faces 45 days of reform school, probably among hardcore thugs, for bringing a piece of camp silverware?

I don't what's more troubling to me. The colossal stupidity that would place Zachary in reform school, or the apparently helpless "our hands are tied" stance of the powers that be.

By the way, what do they give the children to use in the lunchroom to eat with, since silverware is banned?

Once again, it sounds like the zero-tolerance policy exists to cover administrative posterior, rather than help create good order and discipline in the school. Even allowing for the fact that the child should not have brought the knife to school, could the teacher not have said, "Zach, you know there's a rule against having a knife here. Why don't I keep it in my desk, and you can have it back when you go home?"

@Patrick: "By the way, what do they give the children to use in the lunchroom to eat with, since silverware is banned?"

I dunno. Finger food, maybe? Looks like green peas would be off the old menu there...

"After all, surely children can learn handwriting by drawing the letters with their fingers in the air."

A finger can put an eye out, too. Maybe mandatory mittens would help?

I really enjoyed some of the asinine comments at the end of the story. Some of those parents must have gone to the same school where common sense obviously wasn't taught.

That's so ridiculous. They do still have silverware in the lunchroom, so any kid that wanted to use silverware to do harm could just wait until lunch. But, really, how many first-graders have been school shooters? None. They have no precedent for presuming the worst with kids this age.

Schools have also gotten paranoid about basic medicine, like Tylenol. If my daughter gets a headache at school, they won't give her anything, even if I specifically tell the nurse it's ok. I have to drive down to school and give her the Tylenol myself. I would send Tylenol in her backpack, but I'm worried she may get in trouble for having it on her.

My local school district bans "weapons" and then defines the term so broadly that it includes books.

Patrick, you're absolutely right. I was in Scouts for a while, and we sometimes wore our uniforms to school on days when we had a formal Scouts function after school (not very often). And yes, on those days we were expected to have all of our gear with us, including our pocketknives.

So yeah, this is another one of those "you-can't-fire-me-nyah-nyah-nyah" policies that school admins love. As long as he's complying with the policy, then the school board can't touch him. That's why it's zero tolerance; you can't be accused of abusing discretion if there isn't any. The admins just say, "Sorry that's the policy, not our choice" and wash their hands of it. It's all about preserving their jobs and their turf, no matter what.

Now, remember they're in school to learn. Take everything dangerous you can think of away, and see how long it takes them to come up with something that never would have occurred to you.

Than make them write an essay about it.

Amy the silverware you'd linked to actually has a knife. This is what the kid was carrying - the dreaded spork : http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31oyz1g3UuL._SL500_AA280_.jpg

Quote from the NYT story:

Charles P. Ewing, a professor of law and psychology at the University at Buffalo Law School who has written about school safety issues, said he favored a strict zero-tolerance approach.

“There are still serious threats every day in schools,” Dr. Ewing said, adding that giving school officials discretion holds the potential for discrimination and requires the kind of threat assessments that only law enforcement is equipped to make.

Threat assessment? Regarding a first grader? Is it just me, or did this guy just say everybody's dumb except him and the cops?

@Pricklypear: "Take everything dangerous you can think of away, and see how long it takes them to come up with something that never would have occurred to you."

Growing up, our parents wouldn't buy toy guns for me or my brothers. It didn't keep us from playing Army anyway, as baseball bats and plastic bowling pins served perfectly well as rifles and grenades.

Mike,

The utensil the little boy was carrying had a folding spoon, fork and knife, according to the article. The problem isn't that the kid was accused of something he didn't do (bringing a knife to school), it's that zero tolerance policies allow school administators to treat a six-year-old Cub Scout with a knife he brought to eat lunch the same as a 13-year-old gang banger who brought it to threaten someone.

Then you have this one, where the offending pocketknife was in a locked car.

Thinking of the original post, though, if I were the parents, I would sue and demand that all possible weapons be removed from the school: Pens, pencils, books, desks, cafeteria silverware, lunch trays... the list could go on and on.

She's already found her solution. Home school.

This is why no child of mine will EVER attend a public school.

Beth - you're right. I'd confused this with another spork incident.

So? what would they have done when we were kids? D, you are not allowed to birng knives to school, so I'll be giving this back to your parents. Don't bring it again, alright?

Would the kid even really understand all those 80 pages of rules? No.

This is where, I'm a little upset with the parents. I gave my kid a very nice gerber lockback for Christmas one year. First thing I said is: "This is razor sharp and will take your finger off, so handle it correctly." Then showed him all the procedures to use it, and where I cut myself pretty bad when I was his age.

Second thing? "DON'T TAKE IT TO SCHOOL, YOU WILL GET IN DEEP TROUBLE."

Yeah, the school is being stupid, because they can't make a freakin' decision. But the parents ALSO have culpability here. If you can forsee the kid making a mistake like this, you should help the kid also forsee there being a problem and decide to avoid it. Telling the kid that the rule is stupid, does nothing to help him deal with the fact that sometimes you HAVE to follow stupid rules. Deciding which rules are worth breaking is a VERY mature thing to know. When you are 6 you follow the rules. So, parents should have helped him with that.

The kid is an innocent caught in an adult power struggle.

Brian writes: She's already found her solution. Home school.

This is why no child of mine will EVER attend a public school.

Depressing that it came to this. But I don't blame you one bit.

Can you imagine the parents behind this policy? Their silly outraged eyes, demanding, "Well, what's a child doing in school with any kind of knife whatsoever? Who was he planning on stabbing with this?

Cousin Dave, thanks for confirming what I thought. He wasn't necessarily bringing his fancy silverware set to school out of a childlike fascination and a desire to show it off. But he might have been attending an after school function that required it.

The thing that "zero tolerance" policies miss is what was the intent. First degree murder vs. negligent homicide vs. manslaughter - all of these crimes consider intent. What intent did the 6 year old truly have in bringing his Cub Scout utensil to school? Obviously, it wasn't to slash his teachers and classmates. It was a case of youthful exhuberance. Given them fact that he doesn't appear to be a troubled child, I wouldn't expect his parents to search his backpack every morning before school. By way of example - I have 2 daughters who are complete opposites. Every morning I would have to do an inspection of my oldest to make sure she wasn't wearing inappropriate clothing, or had it shoved in her backpack. The other daughter - the thought to search her backpack or her person never once crossed my mind. It's all about intent.

...the kid, Zachary Christie, now faces 45 days in reform school....

There's reform school for first graders? Whatever happened to making him stand in the corner?

Zachary wears a suit and tie some days to school by his own choice because he takes school so seriously," said Debbie Christie, Zachary's mother....

Alex P. Keaton lives!

This looks more like a butter knife (or nail file) than anything else. I'm not sure if you can even cut meat without some effort.

I had one really similar to this in girl scouts.

When I was in school, small pocket knives were allowed but if you were caught pulling them out of your pocket, they were confiscated and given back to the parents.

Switch blades were the only thing I remember being forbidden as far as sharp objects go.

I shouldn't be surprised by this, but admittedly I am.

Maybe all the liberals are after the kid because the Boy Scouts won't allow gays...

Would this have happened in the midwest? No. Would this have happened in the South? No. Left coast? Absolutely! Look what state we are talking about here people..should we even be surprised???

Maybe we can use chalk to draw pictures on the wall like the cavemen: Here is a pack of ACLU attorneys overwhelming cub scout, and here is the indoctrinating teacher searching the water hole for new victims...

One article on this said that the total zero-tolerance policy was implemented because when there was discretion, minority kids were punished at much higher rates.

So, not only are the administrators idiots, but they're also subconscious racists who need to be protected from themselves.

Ahh, where do I sign up to get my nonexistent kid on a waiting list for THIS fine school?

The kid learned some important lessons: Teachers come predominately from the lowest quartile of college students. Don't outsource your thinking to the unqualified. Question authority. Listen to what they say, then draw your own conclusions. Don't trust, verify.

That might not be what they taught, but that was the lesson learned.

I grew up in the south, and kids came to school in their pickup trucks with gun racks in them. Almost everyone had guns because they were hunters, yet we never had school shootings. Something else is going on.

I believe I read that 11 out of the past 16 school shooters were either on anti-depressants or recently coming off them. We're messing around with kids' brain chemistry, often as early as kindergarten now. Most of these drugs were not developed for children, and we really have no idea of the side effects.

One article on this said that the total zero-tolerance policy was implemented because when there was discretion, minority kids were punished at much higher rates.

So, rather than firing bigoted administration and hiring adults with common sense and an understanding of fairness, they did this? Amazing.

I know of a child of a co-worker who frequently goes hunting. The weapons sniffing dogs hit on his car (former gun powder residue supposedly) and upon forcing the young man to submit to a search found an old knife that was falling apart in the glove box. They called THE POLICE and had him tossed into Harris county jail and expelled him from school. Eventually they got the charges thrown out, but not before the kid spent some time in general population and lost his scholarship to college. Once again, a good kid, no drugs no alcohol, but he has a hobby that 75% of the adult males in Texas have.

-Julie

This looks more like a butter knife (or nail file) than anything else. I'm not sure if you can even cut meat without some effort.

I went camping with one of those things once...once.

When the knife, fork, and spoon are all on the same handle, you can only use one at a time. Try cutting your meat without a fork to hold it in place.

It was a big deal here in Idaho about a decade ago when the schools ruled that the high schoolers couldn't bring their hunting rifles to school and leave them in their cars....

My little boy wanted to take his model rocket to show and tell. (The Eestes kind with real rocket engines.) We made it with the glue that you can sniff. I purposely chose this project to teach him early how dangerous fire can be, and what serious damage can be done with inhaling bad things. It wont help him to be sheltered from the real dangers he will face throughout life.

And I had to explain to him why we weren't allowed to bring something so flammable and dangerous to school.

PS- In eigth grade I was arrested for giving a bag of my Dad's oregano to a friend after school. I was handcuffed and led out to the principal's office and suspended for a week. His family owned a string of jewelry stores, and he was just sent home.

When my son was around 2 or 3, he had a tiny toy gun with him when we tried to board an airplane. They took it away from him at the gate, and we had to leave it behind with grandpa. I just remember him crying non-stop on the way home and thinking how ridiculous it was. The gun was clearly a TOY and he was a TODDLER.

This was in the early 90s, before all the 9/11 terrorism concerns, and I think before Columbine, so this kind of stupidity has been building for awhile.

I sent an e-mail to the administrators of the school...it is funny because several of the e-mail boxes are full. :-D We aren't the only ones who think this is stupid.

-Julie

How can you condemn these people, Amy? You have to watch out for those assault utensils, you know!

In a more serious vein, when is it OK to drag these people out into the street and beat them senseless?

Zero tolerance = zero intelligence!

To lovelysoul:

There has actually been one incident where one six-year-old shot another six-year-old at a school in Flint, Michigan. That's the only pee-wee incident that I've read about, however. I hope that the shooter's parents were mortified.

Zero tolerance STILL = zero intelligence.

Zero tolerance is draconian, and the petty, timorous tyrants who impose it intentionally bind the hands and blind those who succeed them. Without discretion, there can be no justice. I would rather have imperfect justice than perfect "zero tolerance = zero discretion = blind obedience" totalitarianism.

Increasingly, it is just this sort of administrative despotism that controls our lives.

More trading of freedom for "security." Ask ol' Ben Franklin about that ... .

To ereic:

In my own town of Mount Airy, People's Republic of Maryland, a sixth-grade girl was labeled a drug trafficker for lending her inhaler to another girl who was suffering an asthma attack on the school bus!

This also threatens to overwhelm us with "problem" students to which we then have to divert resources. How long before every kid is a discipline cases for something as retarded as bringing an eating utensil to school?

It's a bit like putting guys on the sex offender registry for flashing people in the park: When everyone is an offender, the seriously dangerous people become invisible.

Julie writes: "So, rather than firing bigoted administration and hiring adults with common sense and an understanding of fairness, they did this? Amazing."

And of course the real irony there is that the trend continues, even with zero tolerance, zero discretion. So the next step is going to be punishment quotas. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.

So the next step is going to be punishment quotas. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.

Nope, I bet you are right on target. Once the teachers get tired of being made fools of in the press they will quit enforcing the rules...hence the 'punishment quotas' to ensure that the rules are being enforced.

It is just like police writing tickets. The only way many municipalities make sure that traffic police are doing their job is to set quotas for tickets, but a ticket won't ruin your future.

-Julie

This is classic.

From the NYT article on this episode, in describing other such incidents, the abuse by teachers and administrators had prompted the introduction of legislation to clarify that administrators could apply discretion..

The law was introduced after a third-grade girl was expelled for a year because her grandmother had sent a birthday cake to school, along with a knife to cut it. The teacher called the principal — but not before using the knife to cut and serve the cake.

So the teacher frames the girl, stuffs her face, and then rats the kid out.

Another incident is described where a girl is suspended for using a box knife she'd found in the classroom on a craft project. Again the teacher ratter her out, though it was their negligence that allowed the girl to have the knife.

What's apparent, from the NYT article, is that it's usually the teachers who are escalating these incidents. Their hands aren't tied, they're choosing to do this to the kids. One of the administrators quoted states that he's been trying to stop his teachers from turning every minor incident into a case from suspension or expulsion.

In Milwaukee, where school officials reported that 40 percent of ninth graders had been suspended at least once in the 2006-7 school year, the superintendent has encouraged teachers not to overreact to student misconduct.

40% !!!

What that tells you is that the teachers are unable to manage a classroom and are simply throwing kids overboard when they get frustrated them. It's a reign of terror.

"Is it a secret to anyone that a child can stab another child in the eye with a pencil or any other number of objects?"

"Progressives" tend to associate moral agency with *objects* rather than with *people*. This thought process was on display during the debate about arming airline pilots: "guns are bad" preempted "terrorists are bad." See my post arming airline pilots--the deeper issues.

Just to clarify, Monica, flashing people is not normal male sexual behavior. Mooning may be more along the lines you are thinking. Point taken though.

An elementary school principal's job is sheriff, judge, and jury. And probably some boring curriculum BS but my point is, if you are replacing their judgment with a policy, why continue paying them so well?

Another angle that frustrates me: as a parent, I want to be supportive of teachers and other authority figures. Too much parental support for out-of-line entitled brats these days. But how could a parent support the school when they are so damn wrong?

This may be a silly question from a non-parent, but: when did all this Zero-Tolerance nonsense start? Is this a Columbine reaction thing? Childless, I feel like the Reich moved in and somebody forgot to tell me it was happening.

UNFORTUNATE UPDATE:

We fired the rocket off this afternoon. When the parachute deployed, a wind updraft grabbed the craft. It was last seen heading towards Montana, forever lost.

We fired the rocket off this afternoon. When the parachute deployed, a wind updraft grabbed the craft. It was last seen heading towards Montana, forever lost.

Sorry to hear it. 'Tis the unfortunate fate of many a model rocket, I'm afraid. Shouldn't discourage you from building another. I lost several of mine as a kid to similar causes. One way to diminish the likelihood that you lose future rockets is to use a plastic streamer instead of a parachute. Less control of the descent, but usually sufficient to prevent damage unless the rocket is heavy, and it will tend not to float away.

Model rockets were a great way to learn the relationship between performance and craftsmanship. And respect for fire.

Kinda cool to think it's still out there though... Kinda like a balloon release.

"There is no parent who wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife," said George Evans, the president of the Christina district's school board. He defended the decision, but added that the board might adjust the rules when it comes to younger children like Zachary.

Yes, George Evans, in the Multiverse that might have happened, but it didn't.

What I'm getting is that this idiot is in favor of punishing someone for something that might have happened but didn't? I could have plowed my sedan into someone on the way to work and killed them, but I didn't. Should I get preemptively ticketed because that may have conceivably happened had I not in fact driven so work without incident?

I'm thankful that I'm not able to have children, as I'd hate to have to explain to them that, in fact, they are going to have to spend upwards of 12 years in a gulag run by asinine ninnies.

snakeman99, there was strict rules when I was in school in the 80s - zero-tolerance but exceptions could be made by prior approval (e.g. a few of us were allowed to bring x-acto knifes for a special project. We had to give them to the teacher whenever we were not working on the project) - but then around '86 a third grader (i think - maybe a year off) brought a pocket knife to fight another kid - he saw it in a movie his mother was watching - Westside story I think - and absolute zero tolerance was the rule.

..their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife

If you get stabbed through the eye with a knife you're not going to have a good thinking frontal lobe either.

Answers like that tell you that this guy doesn't have a grasp of what's actually needed to make the schools safe and is just showboating.

This may be a silly question from a non-parent, but: when did all this Zero-Tolerance nonsense start? Is this a Columbine reaction thing?

Yes, though it's been accelerated by the growing tendency of parents to fight fiercely against the mere idea of their precious little angels ever facing any hardship or consequences on school ground. Don't get me wrong: Little Zachary sounds like a wonderful kid with great parents, and there are countless other kids who have been swept up in the zero-tolerance whirlwind for doing nothing wrong. But one reason these policies have become so widespread is that administrators were dealing with more and more parents who freaked out whenever their darlings were suspended for setting off pipe bombs on the playground. If there's a set policy that must be followed, the parents can squawk all they want -- their kids will still be suspended. Which is great, unless you're dealing with a situation that requires even a smidgen of judgment. That's when you get situations like poor little Zachary's.

Something good may come out of this, though. Little Zachary sounds loving, well-behaved and responsible, but, well...young children who voluntarily wear suits and ties to school tend to become the subject of teasing at some point, ranging from the mild to the horrific. Any school system that is spending time suspending a six-year-old child for 45 days for bringing a Cub Scout tool clearly isn't going to have the wherewithal to control real bullying. Now, though, Zachary is going to be the kid who was suspended at six years of age for packing heat (well, for packing knife). He's now just a little badass. Which may come in handy down the road...

It was the best $40 I ever spent. We are addicted, though I think there is nothing worthwhile in space..

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: "Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones. These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth-a nightmare of meaninglessness without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death. "

But I LOVE rockets! The sound of even a mini-rocket is like nothing else.

I agree with Eric.

There was this THANG a few years ago. It was an article or a radio show or a book or some damn THANG. And it was talking about the search for extra-terrestrial life, and how chatter in the popular media always says there'd be tremendous philosophical and theological implications if we learned there were another human-style intelligence in the Universe.

And the guy who wrote this article (thang) had the good sense to say, 'Not really...'

The laws of physic dictate that we'll never be able to converse with a distant mind in any meaningful way. We won't be able to exchange car parts, ammunition, beer, or pornography... So what difference does it difference does it make if we're not alone?

People who are really eager to believe in Star Trek warp drives and transporters are essentially being religious. They want to believe in supernatural things who will like them and keep them company. (Are there any old people reading this who remember the Star Trek tricorder? It seemed pretty cool when Lyndon Johnson was president... But as it's worked out, wouldn't you rather have an Iphone? I mean the 16gig model, with cut-&-paste OS? Sure you would.)

That the United States landed on the moon forty years ago means a lot to me. But as our society grows ever-more bureaucratically and economically anal, it's ever-more difficult to spend big on $cience for outer $pace.

The laws of physic dictate that we'll never be able to converse with a distant mind in any meaningful way.

No they don't.

> No they don't.

Whaddya know! We got a believer right here!

Max, if we ever get to talk to another intelligent species, will it also be possible for me to sex the one with the dimples?

Why not, man? Anything's possible! Right? Sure!

Tweeted by a famous libertarian.

Zach got a reprieve last night.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091014/ap_on_re_us/us_zero_tolerance_boy

Sara, that's good to hear. Thanks for the update.

snakeman asks: "This may be a silly question from a non-parent, but: when did all this Zero-Tolerance nonsense start? Is this a Columbine reaction thing?"

It started in the drug-enforcement world in the early '80s. It was a way of basically bypassing due process -- "if we can find one milligram of cocaine on you or in any place where you've been, we will assume you're a dealer." Of course, there's the oft-repeated story that most of our paper currency is contaminated in small amounts by cocaine. So there's a guy driving down the road, he gets pulled over, the cops find one seed that they think looks like a marijuana seed. Or they get his wallet, they do a test, the test indicates a microscopic amount of coke embedded in a $20 that was in the wallet. Under zero tolerance, that's all they need to seize the car and everything else the guy owns. Of course, a lot of innocent people got roped in this way, but at the time the drug enforcement world was on a search-and-destroy mission and they weren't going to let little things like presumption of innocence stand in the way. (It must be said, somewhat in their defense, that they were in fact dealing with a large number of seriously bad people, and they were woefully under-equipped to fight that fight. But even allowing for that, zero tolerance was still a really poor policy, not to mention unconstitutional in all sorts of ways.)

I once cut myself to te point of needing stiches on one of theose plastic knives they have in school cafiterias

I once cut myself to te point of needing stiches on one of theose plastic knives they have in school cafiterias

A high school friend was talking animatedly to a cohort in the print shop and cut his own throat with an exacto-knife. Teh shop teacher just bent him over a trash can and drove him to the hospital (rural area...no 911 and few ambulances). He has a scar to this day, but no one even thought about taking the craft knives away...we just assumed James did a stupid thing.

Fancy that, huh?

-Julie

Suggested Proper Response.
(School officials, please take note)

"Hello, Mrs. Smith? This is Principal Shagnasty. Little Johnny brought his camp tool into school today. They're not allowed in school, so we had to confiscate it. Please come by and pick it up when you can. No, he's not in trouble, but if he brings it in again, we'll have to discipline him. Thank you."

Covers all angles. Gets the device out of his hands to avoid the "accident" argument that some insist on bringing up, and makes sure the parent knows the rules now, while not getting the kid in trouble.

Others have made the correct argument that by making the rule unilateral and across the board, it removes the potential for culpability for a bad guess by the Principal. It also gets said principal and school board on the news when cases like this pop up. In 99 out of 100 cases, rules work, but when that "one" comes up, it makes everyone look foolish.

Of course, then we get that classic binary argument that states "since rule XYZ didn't work in this one case, it should be abolished". No, it means that laws are not perfect, and some modicum of sense must be usedto see if this is one of those "prove the rule" scenarios which the rule-writers had not forseen.

On an unrelated note, a weatherbeaten model rocket just landed in my backyard...

"A high school friend was talking animatedly to a cohort in the print shop and cut his own throat with an exacto-knife. "

I cut my thumb open with one of those things once. I was trying to scrape the label off of the window of an EPROM so I could erase it. (An EPROM is a type of computer memory device, used a lot in the '80s, not so much anymore. It has a little window in the top that exposes the actual chip inside the package. When you want to write new data to it, you first put it under an ultraviolet light to erase the old data. After reprogramming, it was common to put a sticker over the window, usually imprinted with a version number, so that the thing didn't get erased accidentally by stray light.) I was in a hurry and I was holding it between my forefingers and thumb while I scraped it. Just before the knife slipped, I remember thinking, "I really shouldn't be holding it this way..."

I remember thinking, "I really shouldn't be holding it this way..."

I've had a few of those moments myself Cousin Dave! They always end disastrously - for me anyway.

I can't imagine a private school acting like this toward a 6 year old student.

What is the difference between a private school and a public one? Not the money; they cost about the same to run, or maybe the private school costs less.

The difference is that the public school sits under the bureaucracy of the State, staffed by unions who have negotiated detailed rulebooks with the State. So, the schools apply rulebooks to the students, with little variation or appeal. Like the Army, but applied to 6 year olds.

They alter a rule only in special cases when their inflexible idiocy is brought to light. That is the true lesson taught to the public school student every day. Life is arbitrary and stupid. The adults caring for you will ruin your life, without a thought, if you inadvertantly break a rule.

The adults caring for you will ruin your life, without a thought, if you inadvertantly break a rule.

And the rules are random and without thought, cause, or logic.

-Julie

Too Many Federal Laws

We all have to be afraid, not just school children, of a Federal bureaucracy that wants to control all aspects of our lives. Right now, you can't go through the day without breaking a few Federal laws. You know, the ones that are all punishable by "5 years and/or $5,000".

Interesting that some people brought up Xacto knives. I took art classes in high school, and I'm sure that I had my own Xacto knife that I brought with me every day. This was 1988, so I'm sure this crazy all-knives-are-weapons hysteria started after Columbine. P.S. I think I hit return too early - resulting in the weird posting above.

50 years old. Eat a sliced, naked green bell every day. And two weeks ago, almost took my thumb off during the slice.

Wish schoolteachers had given a lot more instruction to knife safety than to goddamn handwriting. It's a more important life skill... The penmanship thing was just never going to happen here. And my pen is steadier than Bill Fucking Clinton's anyway!

Where's my pudgy intern? The smiley one, the one who brings warmth and pizza?

Thinking of the original post, though, if I were the parents, I would sue and demand that all possible weapons be removed from the school: Pens, pencils, books, desks, cafeteria silverware, lunch trays... the list could go on and on – Wayne B

A Kid on my stepson’s football team got stabbed in the face at his school before the summer break. I couldn’t believe the ages involved, they where both only 12. However, the weapon involved; a pencil and this child was repeatedly stabbed by his attacker as he defended himself. I’m no social scientist, but I cannot see how more rules by higher ups and lack of independent thought will solve this issue.

What I'm getting is that this idiot is in favor of punishing someone for something that might have happened but didn't? I could have plowed my sedan into someone on the way to work and killed them, but I didn't. Should I get preemptively ticketed because that may have conceivably happened had I not in fact driven so work without incident? – Choika

Precrime huh? Can’t wait for those days to come rolling around, THREE CHEERS FOR MINORITY REPORTS!!!

A high school friend was talking animatedly to a cohort in the print shop and cut his own throat with an exacto-knife. The shop teacher just bent him over a trash can and drove him to the hospital (rural area...no 911 and few ambulances). He has a scar to this day, but no one even thought about taking the craft knives away...we just assumed James did a stupid thing.
Fancy that, huh – Julie

C’mon Julie, how are we supposed to have even more of these amazing social experiments like Zachary’s here if we actually try to teach young people that their actions have consequences? Maybe that sitch you spoke of was a bit extreme, but c’mon, NOTHING bad is EVER supposed to happen to our little lovelies while they are in school, right? And we as parents are charged with protecting them, even if it is from themselves, yeah?