Insanity! Teacher Bans Students From Bringing Pencils To School
"A Massachusetts school district superintendent said a memo banning sixth graders from carrying pencils was written without district approval.Words. Fail. Me. Pencils are "materials to build weapons" in this lunatic's world. What frightens me is that this sort of empty-headed, kumbaya singing, hemp wearing flower child is in charge of instructing children as opposed to safely being locked in a padded room where she clearly belongs. Being afraid of a frekkin' pencil because it could be used as a weapon? Yeah, that signals that key neurons aren't firing in that pointy little head of hers.
North Brookfield School District interim Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy said Wendy Scott, one of two sixth-grade teachers at North Brookfield Elementary School, did not get approval from administrators before sending the memo to all sixth-grade parents, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported Thursday.
The memo said students would no longer be allowed to bring writing implements to school. It said pencils would be provided for students in class and any students caught with pencils or pens after Nov. 15 would face disciplinary action for having materials 'to build weapons.'
The tool is not the weapon. The person who wields the tool is the weapon. I'd rather face a sheep with a firearm than a wolf with a brick - the brick is infinitely more dangerous in the hands of one who will use it than the gun in the hands of one who will not. Those of us prepared to meet evil with resistance and violence of our own making are never unarmed - as long as we have fists, feet, and teeth we have more than enough tools to make life unpleasant. All better tools do is reduce the damage we will take in the battle - it's the decision to join the battle, or not, that determines whether a person is truly dangerous or not.
Someone afraid of a pencil has no place within 10 miles of a school building.
That is all.
21 comments:
Hey, that's exactly what I complained about all the way through high school on the policy keeping me from carrying a pocket knife. I'm kinda bemused that someone actually went through with it, and not surprised it was done in MA...
Of course, now people can get up in arms over the SCHOOL IS PROVIDING MATERIALS TO BUILD WEAPONS?!?!?
But but but...
If a student has a folder with elastic closure, got close, and hit you in the eye or throat with his homemade, unregistered crossbow...
We need to stem the tide of easily concealable golf pencils! For the children!
I'm buying each of my kids a S&W combat pen now, just on principle.
Went searching for the original story because I hoped something was missing here. Here's what I turned up: link
Sadly, it's just as bad as it sounds. Here's what triggered it.:
The teachers’ memo explained that the change was being made because of behavior problems and indicated that any student found in possession of a pen or mechanical pencil after Nov. 15 would be “assumed” to have the implement “to build weapons,” or to have “stolen” it from the classroom art supply basket.
[snip]
Meanwhile, Police Chief Aram Thomasian Jr. yesterday said he was approached on Friday by parents of one student who had been suspended for having a pen that had been altered to fire a rolled up piece of paper.
“The student showed me how it worked. I’d be surprised if the spitball traveled 4 feet. And at that, I’m not even sure it had any spit on it,” he said.
Mr. Noseworthy said the police chief may have had a different opinion if he’d been involved in the incident from the beginning. He said the school and police chief did not work together on the matter.
Within the context of state statute, nothing mentioned in the teacher’s memo constituted a “weapon,” adding that even a No. 2 pencil could inflict injury if used improperly.
So in other words, this major case of PSH was caused because a 12yr old boy took apart his pen and used it to shoot little balls of paper a few feet. So for that he was suspended and all writing utensils are banned. Serious WTF.
But wait, there's more!
The memo explained that students would be issued a pencil that would be collected at the end of the school day, for use in class. It asked parents to discuss the rules with students over the weekend and to be sure they did not bring contraband writing implements into class.
Jennifer A. Aucoin did just that, explaining to her son that he could not bring pens to school and taking away the ones he had.
“I thought it was a good idea,” she said “Then we got a call yesterday saying the way the teacher did it was not the right way.”
Jay, Massachusetts is lost. All the few freedom loving people left there can do is move to NH and regroup.
"You are the weapon. Everything else is a tool." - SMG Higa.
People like that principal will never learn the lesson.
This story smells like bullshit. It's very doubtful something like this would happen in the way it is described, in centrally-planned Massachusetts. Plus, a teacher taking this kind of initiative in a public school is unlikely, unless it's a revenge attempt against administration. And zero tolerance is generally enforced by ejecting the offending child from the classroom and the building, otherwise is would be known as a "tolerance policy".
TJP: see my comment above for one of several "legitimate"(and I use that term loosely!)news stories abot it. It really happened, sad to say.
Mopar:
The "weapon" in the article you quoted hardly qualifies as one under MA state law regarding weapons in public schools.
Since administrators are responsible for serious discipline sanctions such as suspensions, we can estimate the kind of environment in which these teachers operate. I think what is closer to the truth is that the administrators were caught off guard by the media attention, and now they're trying to sweep it under the rug while scapegoating a couple of teachers.
The parent handbook refers to a weapon policy that is missing from their site, as are all the School Committee policy binders, the last two months worth of Board meeting minutes and current FY budgets. Taxpayers shouldn't have to FOI that information.
There's something Massachusetts residents can do: these public servants like rules. Hold their faces to their own rule books.
I'm still carrying lead scars from pencils that were wielded improperly. I wasn't injured nearly as often by the knife I carried every day. Obviously, students will be much safer if they carry their own knives and are protected from errant pencils.
I am about to offend someone. Probably get myself banned from this site.
I was married to a government (nothing public about it) school teacher for 21 years.
Any parent who allows their child to go to a state institution to be indoctrinated is guilty of child abuse.
I am also the uncle of seven children who were home schooled even with only limited resources. It not only can be done, it gets done all the time.
The ban on pencils certainly looks silly from here.
However, I'll just note for the record that every single time a kid gets suspended, he picks out the most recent and most innocuous thing he got so much as a dirty look for and loudly protests that he's being suspended for that.
So if I send a student out of my classroom for 15 minutes, for instance, because he threatened me, he'll go back past the part where he told me to "watch your back" and said "I can fuck you up out on the street, motherfucker." He'll go back past the point where where he was screaming "You just be tryin' to send people out for no reason! No, no, fuck you! Fuck this school!" He'll go back past the part where he said, "I ain't fixin' to do no fuckin' math no way!" He'll go back past the part where he said "YOU sit down! YOU fuckin' sit down! Shut up talkin' to me! Who you talkin' to?!?"
He'll ignore all the chances he was given along the way over the past few minutes and all the wrong things he's done, and he'll remember why he was out of his seat in the middle of the lesson in the first place, which was nominally to get a tissue or sharpen his pencil . . . and he'll shout at the whole school, "He's sendin' me out just for gettin' a kleenex! I guess I gotta let snot run down my shirt!"
If you took his word for it, you'd wonder why anyone would do something so silly . . . and the reason it seems silly is that almost no one would. He's lying.
So I'm taking the word of the kid who got caught with his pea-shooter and got into trouble (what level was he on when that happened? What had he already done and been warned about that day?) with a grain of salt, and the word of anyone who relies on it the same way.
I'm not defending the ban on pencils, just pointing out that none of us know what this poster child for civil liberties actually did or said to get suspended. We have only his word (and his parents' word) to go by, and that's iffy.
Um, Don?
Regardless of what the kid did or didn't do, the teacher sent home a memo telling parents and students not to bring pencils into class. PENCILS.
Without any authorization from the school, she took it upon herself to ban one of the oldest writing utensils because it could be used as a weapon.
I don't care if she's got the second incarnation of Genghis Khan in her classroom, banning pencils ain't the way to handle a troublemaker.
And if that's how she handles troublemakers, she has no business being anywhere near an elementary school...
Also, notice that I didn't comment on the suspension - because I don't know if this is an innocent kid being persecuted by an idiot teacher *OR* a veteran troublemaker finally getting taken to task...
I'm not defending the pencil memo, I'm just pointing out that people who are rushing to check how far the spitwads can go from the pen, and like the police chief are speculating that there "might not even have been much spit on them" are REALLY missing the point and are also taking the kid's word that he is the victim of a conspiracy to get him into trouble FOR NOTHIN'.
I'm just saying that I've heard that song before many times, and it would be smart to be skeptical. That's all.
Truly a YGTBSM moment...
Apparently my last post was swallowed whole by blogger.
In a nutshell...
We have a previous case where a suspension was the discipline sanction. The item in question was clearly not a "weapon" as defined by Massachusetts state law prohibiting weapons in public schools. From this we can deduce what type of environment is present in the schools, and that the teachers were not just making up stuff. It's one of those rare cases where they were trying to do more than what was required. Suspensions are serious sanctions that are handed out by administrators, not teachers.
Referenced school policy binders and also the last two months of meeting minutes are notably absent from the websites, so there is no way to determine what exactly is the "zero tolerance" policy in place, but the staff handbook says the following:
"DISCIPLINE
Faculty members are responsible for all students in the building. Any inappropriate behavior is to be addressed immediately. Appropriate progressive discipline should be practiced."
The climate of this particular school and even the staff policy is to overreact to incidents involving "weapons". So to me it looks like the administration is sweeping this one under the rug and offering up a couple of teachers as a sacrifice to the angry mob.
Which leads me to this question: If there was clearly a problem with improvised writing utensil weapons in the past, but now there isn't, doesn't that suggest someone in the school system realizes the policy sucks? If you live in Mass and don't like "zero tolerance" nonsense, then here's some leverage, especially considering taxpayers have something to bargain on account of the poor information publishing record of the school system.
I maintain my stance that the original article is B.S.
Don,
I really think we're talking past each other here - I fully agree with you that there may very well be more to the story as far as the poor angelic cherub who caused the memo in the first place.
And it sounds like you agree with me that the memo - and what it entailed - was exactly the wrong way for the teacher to go about handling the problem.
The two items are not necessarily mutually exclusive - the kid *could* very well be NFG, but the teacher is still a hypersensitive ninny...
By Don's "most favorable to the teacher" scenario, she banned *all* kids from carrying writing utensils because *one* bad kid used a pen barrel to shoot a spitwad. By that logic, when one teacher at my high school was busted for soliciting sex from a 16 year old boy (not from our school), the entire staff should have been fired, and put on the sex offender registry, to ensure none of them could endanger a kid.
Also, I wonder if the school cafeteria issues drinking straws. Those make much better pea-shooters than a pen.
Jay,
"I really think we're talking past each other here"
Yes.
In the body of his comment, Don was merely answering the weak suspension tale.
However, in his very first sentence he agreed that the pencil ban was dumb.
Let's not get too eager to crank up the circular firing squad.
Stupidity at this level should be punishable by death. So all those nerds with the over flowing pocket protectors were very dangerous men whoda thunkit.
LOL
Thats pretty funny there JayG
You made that up.
Right?
I mean no one would really send a memo home banning pencils!!??
Banning pencils!!
Thats pretty darn funny there!!
Heh......
You did make it up?
Didn't you?
maddmedic said:
"I mean no one would really send a memo home banning pencils!!??
Banning pencils!!"
Seriously, that's not actually what happened. The teacher memo specifically identifies "pens and mechanical pencils", but goes on to say that plain old #2 pencils will be provided. So if both accounts are true, pencils are simultaneously banned and not banned in the classroom?
I'm all for ridding public schools of stupid policies, which is apparently right in line with the opinions of most commenters. Courtesy of Mopar's link we know that the administration previously suspended a student for the discipline problem mentioned in the teachers' memo. Those two items are completely unrelated?
The administrators are trying to make the authority of the memo the issue, but the actual policy which resulted in the suspension--arguably influencing the non-ban ban--is never addressed.
I apologize for being such a pedantic shithead in this thread, but I have experience working directly with public school employees. To me the power to arbitrarily classify items as "weapons"--handing out serious discipline sanctions which deny students instructional time--is much more important than who gets to write a friggin' memo.
This is something that frustrates me because in my neck of the woods I see well-meaning school reformers who finally get their say in front of municipal committees, then proceed to attack state law, over which local government has no power. It's a wasted effort, and taxpayers then throw up their hands in disgust when nothing changes.
How many teachers need to be fired to change School Committee Policy over which teachers have no control? Details matter.
Moshe, if you think you're going to be banned from THIS site for encouraging people to take their children out of government schools, then you REALLY haven't been paying attention to anything that's been written here...
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