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August 23, 2007

Illegal doodling

I was a prodigious margin doodler in school. Designs, flowers, trees, animals ... anything and everything that caught my fancy would end up filling up the empty spaces along the edges of pages, across bookcovers and on the front of notebooks. In fifth grade I became enamored of saber-toothed tigers after a field trip to the La Brea Tar Pits and they soon dominated my drawings -- snarling, stalking, leaping upon the backs of horses, tearing into the bellies of screaming mammoths ...

If I were a child today, I wonder if such obviously violent doodles would have gotten me suspended.

Chandler school officials have suspended a 13-year-old boy for sketching a picture that resembled a gun, saying it posed a threat to classmates. ...

"I just can't believe that there wasn't another way to resolve this," said Paula Mosteller, the boy's mother. "He's so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good."

The Mostellers said the drawing did not show blood, bullets, injuries, or target any human. They said it was just a drawing that resembled a gun.

But Payne Junior High administrators thought the sketch was enough of a threat and gave the boy a five-day suspension, later reduced to three days.

Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the sketch was "absolutely considered a threat," and threatening words or pictures are punishable.

Terry Locke should be fired ... actually he needs to be studied since I cannot figure out how he walks and talks without a single brain cell in his head.

Here is yet another example of pernicious school administrators who replace judgment with a nonsensical policy of "zero tolerance" items.

Vouchers, please.

Posted by Darleen at August 23, 2007 12:30 PM

Comments

Given what's happened in schools these days I don't blame the school official one bit.

Posted by: Carl W. Goss at August 24, 2007 02:54 PM

Right Carl, the boy might have went on a blood spilling rampage using the gun doodle to deliver nasty paper cuts to dozens of innocent children. Oh the humanity!

Posted by: Boss429 at August 25, 2007 06:09 AM

Yeah, boss, but you'd think twice if it turned out the school official simply ignored the kid and something happened.

Posted by: Carl W. Goss at August 25, 2007 08:28 AM

Something like what, Carl? A poorly drawn weapon jumping off the page into his hand, loaded and ready to kill? Maybe we should suspend every kid who says the words "gun" or "knife" or "bomb"...because what if we don't and something happens? Maybe every kid who looks at somebody funny...because what if we don't and something happens?

I recall that when I was his age and we all thought WW III would be nuclear, I doodled at least a few mushroom clouds. Thank God nothing happened.

Posted by: Pablo at August 27, 2007 07:25 AM

This is hilarious. I finished high school in 1969 in a small town in southwestern Minnesota. Our three-year high school had roughly a thousand students. Not only did just about every boy have a pocket knife, but during hunting season several of us had shotguns and shotshells in our lockers during the school day because we were going hunting for ducks or pheasants immediately after the last class with school teachers and administrators. One of my cousins, eleven years older, was a member of the shooting team at his Minneapolis high school, and he was required to keep his target pistol and ammunition in his locker. In my experience and in my cousin's, not only was no one harmed by the presence of these guns and knives, no one was ever even threatened by them. Times really have changed.

Posted by: Mark F. at August 29, 2007 02:47 AM