Find A Good Kid Who Tries To Do The Right Thing And Suspend Him From School For A Year
Robby Soave writes at Reason of a kid, 12-year-old Kyler Davies, who found a knife in a leather case in a backpack his mom bought from Goodwill. In other words, it was just there in the backpack. He didn't put it there:
Kyler was at school--Coldwater Community Schools in Branch County, Michigan--when he discovered the knife. He promptly told a counselor about it.He was suspended for one full year.
The idiots running the schools there later reduced his suspension to 30 days.
A suspension that shouldn't exist at all. (The message to kids: "If you see something, say nothing.")
On a positive note, this should teach Kyle things he wouldn't have learned at school -- like to always question authority.
Ooh Ooh! Can I give up my 2nd Amendment rights for this "common sense" environment?
Can I Can I Can I?
Bob in Texas at September 20, 2016 10:43 AM
Administrators and the government are not your friends. They are looking after their own benefit. Teachers are not your friend, they want to maintain order and minimize their own work load. Important lessons to learn.
Craig Loehle at September 20, 2016 10:50 AM
Found a knife in his backpack that he didn't know was there?
It's quite possible that the situation is exactly as the kid and his mother describe it. But forgive me if I am just a mite suspicious of this story. Let's wait a bit . . . .
llater,
llamas
llamas at September 20, 2016 11:50 AM
And yet, so many people think government is a force for good, especially with the social programs. The kid will probably now become a Republican or a libertarian rather than a good little communist Democrat.
mpetrie98 at September 20, 2016 12:11 PM
Administrators and the government are not your friends. They are looking after their own benefit. Teachers are not your friend, they want to maintain order and minimize their own work load. Important lessons to learn.
______________________________
Maybe that's why some schools are considering doing away with homework?
Here's one letter in response to that, with comments:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/letters/2016/09/19/doing-away-with-homework-foolhardy-and-irresponsible/eISyR8fjynkIhOSJyOOIEI/story.html#comments
lenona at September 20, 2016 12:14 PM
And here's another letter, with a very different attitude:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/letters/2016/09/19/keep-homework-but-remove-from-grading-process/AjN3KK3zMzUemffI24iVaP/story.html#comments
lenona at September 20, 2016 12:16 PM
Out of curiosity Llamas, why would he turn the knife in if it was his?
Backpacks have lots of pockets. I don't search all of them all the time. Heck, I have coats with pockets I just found years after owning the coat. I borrowed a coat from my sister once and found ~$20 hidden in a pocket (double layer coat with an inside layer zippered pocket inside of another pocket. Why the manufacturer did that I have no idea.) If the money wasn't mostly in coins and rubbing me wrong I never would have found her money for her.
Ben at September 20, 2016 1:19 PM
@Ben - to beat the kid who was about to rat him out to the punch.
If you know you're about to be turned in for an offense which you know will mean serious consequences, better to 'fess up yourself, with a plausible explanation, and try and bluff your way out of it. Happens in the jail all the time - I found this contraband in my cell, it's not mine, I didn't know it was there. Even if you fail, the consequences are no worse than if you'd let yourself be turned in by another.
Why else turn it in at all, unless compelled to?
Not saying this is what happened, it may well be just as he and his mother claim. But I am reserving judgement, just for a bit, anyway. The story is almost too good to be true. I'd like to know the kid's disciplinary record.
llater,
llamas
llamas at September 20, 2016 4:07 PM
Fair enough Llamas. For me this fits right in with how schools are run these days. You can show up with a butter knife and get suspended for a month.
Personally, if I knew I was going to be ratted out I would just dump the knife in a trash can or some out of the way place. It's not like the police are going to finger print it and track you down. But people are well noted for having poor decision making skills. Both child and adult.
Ben at September 20, 2016 4:34 PM
"On a positive note, this should teach Kyle [to duck and cover around authorities to avoid their attention, and when that doesn't work, to deny any knowledge of whatever attracted their attention, and always be a supplicant, groveling before their greatness."]
There. That's a much more likely and useful lesson for the kid to learn from his experience.
Wfjag at September 20, 2016 6:23 PM
School admins have been idiots for a long time.
Radwaste at September 20, 2016 8:18 PM
I'm leaning llama-ward on this one. The school policy even has exceptions for when the weapon was not knowingly possessed:
http://www.thedailyreporter.com/news/20160920/student-suspended-for-bringing-pocket-knife-to-school
I am skeptical that they suspended a kid--for any duration--if all he did was find a knife and immediately turn it over.
We don't even know for sure that he turned it over. That's his mom's story, based on Kyler's story, corroborated publicly by no one, and the staff can't comment because they have to protect his privacy. Why is everyone accepting the story at face value?
Educators certainly can be unreasonable about this stuff. I don't believe they are THAT unreasonable. Everyone, this is your cue to bring up the butter knife and the Pop-Tart gun (please do look that one up) and insist that most educators are this fanatically black and white.
Insufficient Poison at September 20, 2016 8:36 PM
Here is the thing IP, it only takes one. There are roughly 100,000 principals in the US. It only take one who is a crazy bed wetter to make a story like this. If this was a poor school I would call shenanigans on the mother. Poor schools are usually quite used to dealing with knives and even guns. They don't tend to freak out. But if it was a rich school I would believe it. They aren't used to anything like that and they need to prove they are taking safety seriously. So they tend to wig out.
As for proof, I don't even need the news. I was sent to the principals office for getting picked on more than a few times. I almost failed PE because I forgot an appointment with a female student. (By the way I apologized to the girl I stood up. It just didn't occur to me I needed to apologize to the teacher as well. My parents had to argue and threaten to get me a 'C'.) One school I attended had a smoking section for students. They also had a policy of no drugs on campus. If you got caught the principal would hold your drugs for you and you could pick them up after school was over. A third school I didn't attend (it was a cousin's) the math teacher gave out bags of his hair to his students as a reward. No one really understood why. A friend at another school got a three day suspension for wearing an overcoat. The administration was wigging out over Columbine. The fact that he had worn that coat all year and they never told him he couldn't wear it anymore was irrelevant.
So sorry but my personal experience shows educators are that unreasonable. It also shows that things are usually more personal than professional. Punishment largely depends on who the student and their parents are. In theory zero tolerance was supposed to fix some of that. But in reality it just makes things worse.
Ben at September 21, 2016 5:57 AM
Ben, you don't have to call shenanigans on the mother, any more than you have to take the mother at face value. You can just say you don't know what really happened, because you don't. You have no idea who this woman is. You've crafted some back story that's based on how wealthy the school district is.
Regardless of what happened to you, or what other anecdotes you've heard (and you're filtering out countless times that educators have behaved reasonably or above and beyond), you have no reason to believe this woman 1) knows the truth (she wasn't there) or 2) is telling the truth. Except you want to.
I hate it when people say variations on "I can believe it." What does that even mean? It's an excuse to buy into a story without proof of any kind. Yes, you "can believe" anything you want, especially if it fits a narrative that gets you excited.
To demonstrate the bias that's going on, check Comments sections on the sites that publish this, and watch how angry people get at the suggestion that this might not be true. They should WANT it to not be true, but if it's not then they can't be outraged.
Insufficient Poison at September 21, 2016 9:01 AM
No IP. I am not crafting any sort of back story. I am laying out the criteria for my belief space. I.e. the mathematical area where a story passes as credible. For me this story is more credible if it happened at a 'rich' school than if it happened at a 'poor' school.
I was quite clear that not all educators are crazy morons. But with a population in the millions having some be crazy morons is quite natural and reasonable.
As for the phrase "I can believe it.", this really isn't complicated. It means exactly what the words say. This event passes a personal threshold for disbelief.
And here you are getting outraged that some people find this event credible when you desperately want it to not be credible. You are insisting that no educators are this crazy despite ample evidence that some (not all) actually are.
Ben at September 21, 2016 9:33 AM
I'm not outraged, just a little disgusted, and unlike you, it's by something I am observing personally. I want people to TRY to be objective and not have knee jerk reactions to click-bait "news" stories--especially people who fancy themselves to be smarter than the rest of the population.
"I can believe it" isn't complicated--you're right. It's dumb. People say this like it's a blank check to cast aspersions on someone--in this case admittedly in the abstract--without evidence. Whether or not you "can" believe something has nothing to do with whether it actually happened.
I believe some people are victims of racism, sexism, and rape, but that doesn't mean I believe anyone who says she was. I tend to be especially guarded with my judgment when a story seems EXTREMELY one sided and has only one source.
At some point during this process, the matter of him NOT KNOWING he had the knife would have been raised. To believe this story is to believe multiple administrators said, "STILL, we have suspend him for a year, even though we cannot recommend anything else he could have done." POSSIBLY they did, but that's suspicious. It seems likely that something else occurred--for example, hypothetically, maybe he was doing other stuff with it before he handed it over.
I'm not defending educators (I don't really care about them much one way or another) as much as I'm arguing for healthy skepticism when responding to these stories.
Insufficient Poison at September 21, 2016 11:58 AM
"I'm not defending educators (I don't really care about them much one way or another) as much as I'm arguing for healthy skepticism when responding to these stories."
I'm afraid it doesn't come across that way IP. And thank you for the compliment on my intelligence.
Ben at September 21, 2016 12:07 PM
Well, not to you because you were victimized by FIVE different anecdotes! Even a perfectly neutral appeal for common sense must be very triggering for you!
Seriously, when you whipped out that Either/Or fallacy instead of, like, a counter argument to my skepticism point, I was awestruck. "Questioning unsubstantiated story" == "blind support of educators."
Insufficient Poison at September 22, 2016 7:11 AM
Indeed. They were harsh anecdotes. They beat me with cooked spaghetti! ;)
It is more the fact you keep misconstruing my comments and the emotionally charge tone you use.
Ben at September 22, 2016 10:47 AM
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