School foaming suspect. (via WMAZ)
A fourth grader in Houston, Georgia received a 3-day suspension for bringing a Nerf gun to school, because officials deemed it to be a weapon, and schools don't mess around these days when it comes to anything with the word "gun" in it. With good reason. The problem in this situation, though, is that Ramsey McDonald was following an assignment to "bring in some of your favorite toys."
Scott McDonald said his son told him he was bringing an iPad and a couple of his toys, which sounded okay to him, even though it would've been reasonable to wonder why his kid's teacher would want students bringing toys to school in the first place, as "not enough distractions" isn't one of the many problems facing our education system.
He says if his son told him he was bringing the Nerf gun he would've told him not to. Again, because of the whole "gun" thing. But it's hard to imagine any teacher being shocked that a fourth-grade boy's favorite toy shoots projectiles. That's what boys like. I guarantee he brought the iPad because it had a game on it that involved shooting and killing something.
Similarly, if you ask a group of kids to bring you a favorite item from the cutlery drawer, you're probably going to see a knife or two.
A suspension wouldn't have shocked anyone if he'd somehow managed to take out another boy's eye with a foam ball. But, since it sounds like he didn't even shoot the gun, and the assignment was "favorite toy" and he brought in an item sold in toy stores, you'd think the school would chalk it up to a communication problem.
No such luck. Houston school Supt. Mark Scott spoke with WMAZ:
He declined to discuss the specifics of his case, but said the suspension was not based on school officials viewing the Nerf gun as a dangerous item: "We never viewed that as a weapon."
Had the boy brought an actual weapon to school, Scott said, he probably would have been diverted to an alternative school. The three-day in-school suspension is typically the lightest form of suspension, considered a "minor-level intervention.”
In layman's terms, that roughly translates to "Lawsuits are expensive, we're covering our asses."
(by Jonathan Corbett)