Pointy stick taken from student. School calls it weapon.

DOVER, N.H. -- A Dover woman said she's upset that an American flag her son took to school was taken away by school staff.

Theresa Stevens said the flag, which is attached to a roughly 24-inch wooden stick with a standard gold spear tip, was given to her seventh-grade son, Shawn, by a family friend, the mother of U.S. Marine Cpl. Gary Fielding, who is about to deploy to Afghanistan.

One of those little two foot balsa wood flags. Anyone who's handled one knows a string breeze will break it. Try stabbing and the stabber will just get splinters.

Pencils, compasses and protractors are far more deadly.

"A student came to school yesterday with a flag that was rather large and didn't fit inside the backpack," she said. "A staff member felt that it could potentially be dangerous because of the pointy end and took the item and let the student know and the parent know that they took the item and could pick it up.

My favorite part:

"We have American flags in every classroom," she said. "We do the Pledge of Allegiance every day. Patriotism is definitely embraced at Dover Middle School. This incident had nothing to do with the fact that it was a flag. It was the pointed stick that the flag was on."

So I hope they remove all the flags in those classrooms. God forbid some lunatic child pulls one off the wall and slaughters 70 students with it.


Link


I intentionally downplayed the "flag" aspect of it. The pointy stick itself is no weapon and pointy sticks are abundant in schools everywhere and the last thing I want to see is a bunch of jingoistic grunting about "patriotism" when that is not the issue. The nanny-state hypocritical and ultimately useless safety police is the issue.

Well, it very easily could be used as a weapon, but as we all know, schools are full of weapons. If someone has the urge, it won't take long, to find an appropriate tool/weapon. Actually, the 2 foot stick wouldn't be very practical. Too long. Not easy to conceal.


I've still got about 3 or 4 places on my arms, that resemble a freckle. They are not freckles. Just good ol' lead, remnants from the [color=EDFFB3]Great American Junior High Pencil Wars.

It's no saner here. The kids aren't allowed to play conkers anymore.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


The level of over reaction on the part of schools today is absurd. Kids getting suspended for giving a friend an Advil, kids getting forced into mandatory counseling for drawing a stick figure with a gun, kids getting suspended for bringing a plastic army man to school, the rest of it.

Much of it is certainly PC driven, but it also has to do with the tremendous expansion of what constitutes Loco Parenti in schools, where schools are considered alternative parents for children. The plastic gun is a problem because as surrogate parents, they feel they need to take the gun in support of the other children to whom they are surrogate parents for. Schools are legally held liable for creating an environment where nobody will be offended, something impossible to accomplishment in absolute terms with kids. A large element of these foolish incidents have to do with what the legal system has deemed adequate loco parenti and has held schools and their employees liable, both in criminal and civil court for what happens on school grounds. Unless that nonsense is moderated this will continue.

Are school administrators responsible for maintaining a healthy environment? Sure they are, but a group of kids is most definately going to be a hostile environment in the context of today's law as if a school yard is to have the same level of decorum as a work place.

Schools have become less a place of learning and a place where social engineering takes place in the form of values education, historically something that was assigned to the family to provide. Instead of simply kicking a kid out of school all together if he crosses a line, they over react on all items.

As far as weapons at school, my kid plays the baritone and he could definately kill you with that.

So they have to have computers because pointy sticks are outlawed?? Is that why they want more tax money

Almost as dangerous as fruit