Pa. kindergartner suspended for bubble gun remark, and other stupid 'zero tolerance' stories

I blame the no mind teachers and staff...they are just too too trendy,
Political correctness runs out both ends of these people....
They are a waste of good air.

Zero Tolerance = Zero thinking.

When your school has a zero tolerance policy, then they don't have to use judgmen or common sense.

It is school suspension, not a goddamn FEMA camp. Ya, its an unjust punishment. Which means they don't get in trouble with their parents. Which means days off school! I would be ecstatic!

Stop acting like you have been personally hurt. Seriously ATS, man up.

reply to post by TsukiLunar


Holy Sh**, I'm not even from America, but this stuff is insane. No it's not a fema camp, it's being punished for being a child.

Your comment, most shallow.

reply to post by AdamOver

Your comment, most shallow.

How so? this is just a handful of incidents picked out just because of the extreme punishment. This is not the standard. Why should i be mad?

Explain why i should be mad about this these literally inconsequential incidents.

reply to post by TsukiLunar


Common sense has been taken out of far too many of our daily interactions. As adults we must wade through these idiotic rules and regulations just to get through the day.

Children need to be left alone to be children.

In my opinion, any adult who thinks its ok to remove a child from school for making a gun sign with their hand seriously needs removing.

It boggles the mind. And leaves me to question the intelligence of anyone who can see this anything but idiotic.

In the case of the pizza gun, shouldn't pizza be banned?
In all schools.... not just the school that the problem occurred in.
The offending culprit is the pizza, it has replaced the gun.
The children can't bring a toy gun to school, why should pizza be tolerated when it is used in the same capacity?

ETA: A ban to include celery, carrots, string cheese and bread should come later. Soup and pudding will be acceptable foods, but silverware could be used as a faux gun and should also be banned.

The kids will have to drink their soup and lick their pudding, I suppose.

Originally posted by HomerinNC

MOUNT CARMEL, Pa. (AP) — A 5-year-old Pennsylvania girl who told another girl she was going to shoot her with a pink toy gun that blows soapy bubbles has been suspended from kindergarten. Her family has hired an attorney to fight the punishment, which initially was 10 days but was reduced to two. Attorney Robin Ficker says Mount Carmel Area School District officials labeled the girl a "terrorist threat" for the bubble gun remark, made Jan. 10 as both girls waited for a school bus.

abcnews.go.com...

Yeah, 5 year old terrorists now.
Thank you Comrade Obama and your liberal left for this beyond ridiculous crap going on in schools. This 'zero tolerance' crap has gone WAY too far.

Other stories similiar to this is of a child eating a slice of pizza into the shape of a gun, then pointing it at someone else, then gets suspended

SMYRNA, Tenn. - For the rest of the semester, a Rutherford County elementary student has to eat lunch at the "silent table" for allegedly waving around a slice of pizza some say resembled a gun.

www.wkrn.com...

Or how about the deaf child Hunter, not being allowed to sign his name because the sign is holding your fingers up like an imaginary gun:

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (CBS St. Louis) — A Nebraska school district asked a deaf preschooler to change his sign language name because they believe the hand motion he used looked like he was shooting a gun. The family of 3-year-old Hunter Spanjer said that their deaf son’s sign gesture violates the Grand Island Public Schools weapons policy. “He’s deaf, and his name sign, they say, is a violation of their weapons policy,” Brian Spanjer,Hunter’s father, told Nebraska based news channel KOLN.

stlouis.cbslocal.com...

Again, thank you Comrade Obama and your liberal left for demonizing firearms, the same TOOLS, (yes its a TOOL folks) that secured our freedom as a nation.
All of you who fall for this outright propaganda should be ASHAMED of yourselves!!!

edit on 1/19/2013 by HomerinNC because: (no reason given)

I wasn't aware that Obama himself handed out these punishments. If you're going to be upset, at least direct your energy towards those actually accountable; in this case, the faculty/principals of each individual school by story.

The bubble gun incident was handled poorly, I agree. However, most school districts have specific guidelines in place for threats involving lookalike weapons, which this incident falls under. Had it been an Airsoft weapon, the incident would have been treated identically by staff, although an Airsoft weapon much more closely resembles an actual gun than a pink toy gun.

The pizza thing I don't see a problem with. The "silent table" is far from cruelty, and we don't know how disruptive this child was prior to this incident.

The deaf child is in the wrong. "Hunter" (proper noun) and "hunter" (improper noun) are two separate signs. To sign his name, he would spell it. If his name was Bob or Nick he wouldn't use the sign for those verbs. He'd spell out B-o-b.

I haven't checked, but I would bet that pizza kills more people (by way of food poisoning) than toy guns do. I can't believe how these school administrators endanger children.

Originally posted by DarKPenguiN
I agree but I find it so funny you are blaming Obama (who I also do not like BTW)

-These Policies came with the Bush Administration. No GI Joe Toys in school even (as they have "guns")

Some of you people act like it was such a great "free" nation with no stupid rules until Obama came along- Like the "Obama Phone" which really was the Ronald Reagen Phone- Obama has strengthened the stupidity but didnt start it.
Thank Comrade Bush for most of this.

Well, the identifiable start of it (for some of us) was Bush, yes. However, it's likely it started even before that. I do not blame Obama exclusively but I do blame him for playing his own role in it.

How long will it be before this evolves into something far more sinister?

Right now, we seem to be only looking at suspensions. I was watching Fox News last night and something very dark caught my attention. As they were talking about gun control, they suddenly switched and started talking about "mental illness". The focal point of this conversation arrived when one of them appeared to suggest that teachers or doctors or school staff or someone should be reporting "strange" (paraphrasing) kids to the authorities.

During the same conversation, it took another interesting twist when one of them suggested we need to find some way to make sure all the weirdos (again, paraphrasing) are taking their "medication".

Now if you're a "weirdo" like me, you might be thinking they could do anything they wanted all the way up to and including chemical lobotomies with this forced "medication".

The pieces are falling into place. At least one form of thoughtcrime is being defined. Will it stop with young children or will they be working on adults too? I've always thought they tend to mostly leave adults alone when they start on a new stage and a new generation because they figure it's too late to change people who are not very young and malleable.

But with Obamacare, one never knows where they might be able to go.

reply to post by AwakeinNM


These children should rightfully be suspended. Try to understand the feelings of the other person to whom they were pointing their "gun". Clearly these kids mimic what they see and hear. There generally is only one meaning behind pointing a gun at someone.

reply to post by davjan4


There also is a zero tolerance to kids bringing medication to school, unless dispensed by the nurse. I think that is using good judgement and common sense.

reply to post by davjan4


There also is a zero tolerance to kids bringing medication to school, unless dispensed by the nurse. I think that is using good judgement and common sense.

reply to post by HomerinNC


And people are wondering why when they grow up they go on killing spree rampages AT THE SCHOOL?

Aren't kids getting mixed messages? Teachers, parents (well, good ones), legislators all tell our kids not to shoot guns--they can be dangerous. But when you turn on the TV, its another story entirely.

Wow i would hate to be a kid now a days, I remember when i was young which wasn't that long ago as i am currently 22 i could run around the woods and peoples gardens with my friends pretending to shoot each other. We even created a version of hide and seek with two teams called the gun game. Now a days if i was a kid and done that id be scared of being labeled a terrorist and having the swat team at my door.

Its crazy let kids be kids.

Originally posted by jupiter869
Aren't kids getting mixed messages? Teachers, parents (well, good ones), legislators all tell our kids not to shoot guns--they can be dangerous. But when you turn on the TV, its another story entirely.

Tying this in with my last post in this thread, I think TV and movies are meant to act almost as an agent provocateur. To stir up and bring out the "violent tendencies" in kids ASAP. I think this might be part of the reason for the extreme violence and the contradiction between that and the fact that (as we all know) Hollywood is very liberal. Liberals take their politics with them everywhere they go. If there is no obvious liberal message in a movie or TV show, you can almost bet there is a deeply hidden one.

reply to post by HomerinNC


Wow. And people wonder why I mainly homeschool my son. He attends a charter school twice a week. I better hope he never does the little "Pyoo pyoo pyoo" laser gun noises he makes when he runs around the house playing, on one of those two days!!
Utter craziness.
Anyone seeing my son do that would probably assume my son was exposed to all kind of violent entertainment or guns. They would never understand that he is just emulating his G1 Transformers videos..something we 80's kids grew up with and reenacted time after time. Just like when my brother and I would play GI Joe (I always ended up being Cobra Commander because his friends needed a "bad guy" and I was the only girl..)
We used to bring waterguns to school to play at recess. We used to make rubber band guns and shoot them at each other. Please, anyone show me any boy child (at least) and a lot of girls, that did not pretend to have a gun at some point. This did not make us all mass murderers!
We are indoctrinated from an early age to worship our "Heroes"...cops, soldiers, etc. Then when children emulate them, they are being punished?
I guess now they are at the stage of swiftly and severely making an example out of any child who dares Thoughtcrime.

Originally posted by BrianFlanders
How long will it be before this evolves into something far more sinister?

Right now, we seem to be only looking at suspensions. I was watching Fox News last night and something very dark caught my attention. As they were talking about gun control, they suddenly switched and started talking about "mental illness". The focal point of this conversation arrived when one of them appeared to suggest that teachers or doctors or school staff or someone should be reporting "strange" (paraphrasing) kids to the authorities.

During the same conversation, it took another interesting twist when one of them suggested we need to find some way to make sure all the weirdos (again, paraphrasing) are taking their "medication".

Now if you're a "weirdo" like me, you might be thinking they could do anything they wanted all the way up to and including chemical lobotomies with this forced "medication".

The pieces are falling into place. At least one form of thoughtcrime is being defined. Will it stop with young children or will they be working on adults too? I've always thought they tend to mostly leave adults alone when they start on a new stage and a new generation because they figure it's too late to change people who are not very young and malleable.

But with Obamacare, one never knows where they might be able to go.

edit on 20-1-2013 by BrianFlanders because: (no reason given)

I have had this on the back of my mind lately. Especially since Aurora. I am also noticing a huge increase in locally and nationally reported stories of people committing bizarre acts (eg. A homeless man punched and threw a woman on to some train tracks. Unlike the other cases in which people were killed, this woman managed to get off the tracks, thank heavens..) In each case, the news has been careful to report that these people are mentally ill. Also, noticed a lot of threads on ATS, wherein people are merely questioning certain events (such as Newtown), and are attacked by posters saying these people need mental help, are mentally ill, should be committed, etc. Just something to watch out for. It looks as if it is heading towards labelling anyone who does not swallow "official news" as unstable or in need of medication.