This business of suspending a kid for drawing a picture of a gun really ticks me off. Back in the 50s, we regularly brought our toy guns to school so we could play war or whatever afterward; the worst trouble you could get into was having it taken up if you took it out in class, and that happened if it was a bag of marbles or a Yo-Yo. In junior high, I used to draw detailed pictures of firefights and tank battles, and when a teacher noticed, she sent me to the office--so the principal could ask me if I wanted to draw some posters for the school. (I was apparently pretty good.)
I don't recall any massacres taking place at school in those days. Gee, do you suppose maybe kids drawing pictures of guns isn't the problem?
The other thing I remember from my school days is that most, like 99%, of us kids behaved pretty well--because if you didn't, they have you three hard whacks on the butt with a big paddle. If you really screwed up, you got five--and if you really, REALLY got WAY out of line, they just sent you home till the following September and you got to start that grade over.
None of that happens any more. I was a teacher (middle school) for 23 years, and the courts and politically-correct administrators have basically abolished punishment for wrongdoing in the schools. Now, I'm not a big fan of paddling--it was often unfairly done, and often overused--but if a kid acts like a jerk, SOMETHING ought to happen to him.
Example:
I tell the class to get out their math books. A kid says to me, and I quote, "F*** you, motherf***er, I ain't doin' no f***in' math!" I send the kid to the office, where they give him a "real good talking-to," and they send him back. He comes strutting back in and announces to the class with a grin, "They didn't do nothin' to me!" That sort of thing happened to me more times than I'd care to count.
Every now and then you win one, though with no help from the administration. I once had a kid transferred into my class because he'd threatened to beat up his former teacher, a petite woman right out of college. (The transfer was his only punishment.) On his first day, he put one of his friends up to asking, "What would you do if one of your students said he was gonna beat you up?" I looked the new kid right in the eye and said, "I'd tell him to give it his best shot." the first kid said, "They'll fire you," and I said, "They can fire me twice. I don't get paid enough to take that kind of stuff off some punk."
I got called on the carpet for this--and they gave me a "real good talking-to."
The kid never gave me any trouble, though.
Everybody blames the parents. Sorry, no dice. We had kids back then with lousy parents, too--drunks, hookers, you name it--who didn't give a rat's ass how their kids behaved. But they still behaved in school, because they knew they'd be punished there, no matter what happened at home.
100 to 1 that same school that suspended the kid for drawing a gun won't do it for cussing a teacher. We've got it backwards, and THAT'S where Columbine and Virginia Tech came from.
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"Valor needs first strength, then a weapon."
-- J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
"Free men have arms; slaves do not."
-- William Blackstone (1723-1780)
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looking gun!
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