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Students Banned From Bringing Pencils To School
mernilio writes "According to UPI: 'A Massachusetts school district superintendent said a memo banning sixth graders from carrying pencils was written without district approval. 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.'"
Sure why not when I could just break a chair leg off and bludgeon someone.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
I really thought the UK would do something like this first, but you yanks just had to one up us on paranoid didn't you?
Maybe it's me, but isn't the proper headline "Students NOT banned from bringing pencils to school"?
After all, the district said that the teacher sent the memo without permission of the superintendent and that it did not reflect district policy. So we got an overzealous and whacked out teacher, which is certainly not news.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Wew!
And we can't have weapons in school now can we? Actually, I am pretty sure that measure is to counter violence, but since when has "weapons control" laws ever resulted in decreased violence? Look at Japan! Sure, they have probably the most strict gun control laws of any place -- even police rarely carry guns. But does that stop murders and mayhem? Nope! It just making the killings more gruesome and painful.
What is next? No steel rulers because they can be used as a knife and sword? What about paper? It can be used to give paper cuts. What about a winter scarf, it could be used as a weapon to strangle someone.
What is next? TSA screening before children enter the school? ohh, wait, that's already happened
first post?
That can't possibly be the whole story.
At least it's just a single moron teacher that's responsible for this asshatery, not the principal or the school board.
Technoli
A warm welcome to the future head of TSA.
Yeah, THIS site is a respectable, trustworthy source of news.
Ok, seriously seriously. I ask this honest question: Is a big percentage of American people really stupid and paranoid like that? Students can't bring pencils to schools? What should they bring, then, their PSPs?
It really is time to join the "what next brigade".
What next children banned from school for having long-ish nails.
Should we also cut their hands because they can hurt with them? http://myhappywindow.blogspot.com/
Pencils are certainly dangerous weapons, and books are hazardous too. I suggest a technical approach to child safety. Encase each child in a special pod that takes care of feeding and waste while connecting their minds to a central instruction program that provides enhanced virtual instruction. The excess body heat could even be recovered to provide energy to the school.
My school system published a no weapons policy in the early 90s. If I'd been a bit more of a troublemaker, I would have shown up one day with no books or pencils, because any of them could be used as a weapon.
It's nice to see that the bureaucracy has finally fulfilled its own stupidity.
"I'm going to make this pencil disappear.. TA-DA, IT'S GONE!"
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Students really should be hog tied and gagged. This will stop them from using their bodies as weapons (fists, feet, teeth, sheer mass pushing another mass, etc). Also, put each child into a little divider/cubicle so none of them can give "evil glances" that might emotionally harm another student. Completely immobilize and segregate each child, no harm can be passed from one to another!
But North Brookfield is too cowardly to use either
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
a teacher heard about the Pen15 club and was afraid that the students would try to start a Pencil15 club...
This is a step up. I've heard NJ schools basically make families buy everything the kids need for school. At least when I went in the 70s and 80s, they would provide us paper and art supplies; send you kid in with pencils, pens, and a trapper-keeper and you were good to go. It looks like basically the entire budget goes to paying teachers' and administrator's salaries now. They sure aren't using it to keep up the buildings, and the students have to beg for donations just to pay the bus driver to take them on a field trip to the other side of town.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Sure why not when I could just break a chair leg off and bludgeon someone.
You let your pupils sit!, in chairs?!?!? When I was a schoolboy, our classroom was in a paper bag, by the side of the road . . . etc.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
and I might feign outrage and fury toward our teacher overlords...
Any student caught bringing their hands to school will have them cut off and will be expelled, as those pose a hazard to them and others.
Someone gets poked with a pencil, ban pencils and so on. This sort of "generals preparing to fight the last war" problem comes from a reactive posture rather than moving to address the real problem.
If you're worried about violence in the school get a really good security professional to watch the kids as they come in. Focus on the ones who "look like trouble".
Profiling has become a bad word in the US when it should be the focus of much of the security push. Profile, focus on behavior and get ahead of the threat.
Sometimes, the line between a school and an airport with a looming terror phobia is paper thin.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Maybe if we didn't teach the kids to build weapons out of the pencils / pens we wouldn't have an issue.
that I lived in the US, but have you completely lost your minds ? Have you become so paranoid that kids with pencils are a threat ?
Imagine, 1000 kids, each with 10-20 pencils ... OMG A weapon of mass destruction :)
... and ban students from schools. But then hordes of them will be hanging out on the streets, sharpening their pencils, and finding some trouble to get themselves into . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Yet another FINE example of intellectually stunted individuals being put in a position of educating our children.
And another FINE example of said intellectual amoeba eschewing proper channels, or even common sense in implementing something that's utterly pointless and only generates an aura of fear and distrust in what is, ostensibly, an educational institution.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
... the pen(cil) is mightier than the sword after all.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Well, the parents could always turn this around on the superintendent's precedent and claim that the school board is contributing to the delinquency of minors by providing the material to make weapons in the classroom. It's all pretty silly when we start making rules around what people *might* do with something rather than what they *do* with something.
I herd the TSA has offered the school to install full body scanners at the gates. Apparently a class room was almost hijacked the other week by six year old terrorists carrying sticks of grey plasticine and safety scissors.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Weapons of Mass Education!
Why take the trouble to break off a leg when using the whole chair is almost as effective? Even most student desks nowadays are light enough to be effective, if rather awkward, weapons.
But this is little more than the next logical step proceeding forward from a paralyzing, irrational fear of weapons and conflict.
So much so that they'd rather take some dudgeon mongering website's word for what happened than to google the original sources and find out this is a non-story. Well, I don't mind being wet blanket, so I did it for you.
If you must know, a couple of sixth grade teachers got fed up with students playing with toy pens, then losing them and disrupting the class looking for them. So they decided to ban student owned writing instruments altogether, but rather than come right out and tell parents that their kids are badly behaved, they used a pen modified by one of the students to shoot spitballs as an excuse for the ban. Since using a writing instrument as a "weapon" conjures images of students stabbing each other in the eye with a pencil, that naturally garnered a lot more attention than the teachers expected. The acting superintendent stepped in, reversed the policy and wrote a memo explaining everything and suggesting everybody calm down.
But of course the story of a couple of beleaguered teachers being too timid to tell parents they'd raised a mob of brats isn't as much fun for people who like to complain about the nanny state.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
only outlaws will have pencils
Why pens are allowed on airplanes. Without effort, I can think of at least 6 ways to kill someone with a pen. I cannot think of any way to kill someone with a pair of nail clippers.
For the record, when I was in grade school I was twice stabbed by classmates, once with a pencil, once with a pen. Minor injuries in both cases. First incident in the 60s, second in the 70s. This is not a new concept.
Are they going be like banks and chain pens to desk's?
whats next no forks or spoons in the lunch room?
EVEN PEOPLE IN PRISON GET PENS AND PENCILS.
So much fear...
Take a couple rulers, one with that groove in the middle and the holes. Add some braided rubber bands and a firing mechanism using the holes, and you have a quite dangerous pencil crossbow.
I'm getting all vengeful on one of my greatest pet-peeves and perennial nemeses.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Who writes in pencil in sixth grade anyway. I recommend they all bring in a pen. }B^>
D@mn, people.
--
Toro
Johnny is staying home from school today principal, he told me, "My body is a weapon."
Apart from the fact that the idea is silly, by giving them school-issued pencils it's also pointless.
Clearly you've never had a male child of your own. A boy as young as 18 months will pick up anything he can lift and beat/stab everything (person, animal, or vegetable) that he sees. It is not necessary to teach a boy to be violent; it is necessary to teach him how NOT to be.
A better link would have been the UPI website, not the one above. Why link a source quoting another source?
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/11/18/School-Pencil-banning-memo-not-official/UPI-17681290120134/
Correction - some 20 Caveman-Build 6th graders have the strength for this. There's a reason they pwned recess.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Too bad those rolled up papers weren't full of pot. Maybe kids wouldn't be so violent.
I dismantled my crib when I decided I wanted to upgrade. Brought the thing out in pieces to my poor, shocked, aghast mother.
I also have graphite under the skin on one finger from the same sort of accident. I wonder how comon it is.
I have to admit there's a "dark passenger" part of me that loves this shit, and thinks the people of this country deserve every damned scan, grope and pencil ban that the government can dump on them. Is that wrong? It's not a big part, but it's there.
The big surprise to me is that TSA hasn't yet banned pencils.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
As TFS says, it was just a single teacher...
"Heart of Darkness, I stab at thee!!"
The Teaching Safety Administration?
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
they chain the knives (in the kitchen) and the tools in the workshops to the tables (or so I've heard)...
seems perfectly reasonable to me - chain the pencils to the desks - or do everything in fucking crayon.
remember what Joe Pesci did to that guy in GoodFellas? get your shinebox?
jokes aside ..when I was in fifth grade, one kid stabbed another kid with a #2 pencil and the tip broke off in his hand.. then there was the stapler incident.. cha-chunk - right through the ear lobe.
EVEN PEOPLE IN PRISON GET PENS AND PENCILS.
Yeah, but nobody cares if people in prison turn writing instruments into shivs and kill each other with them; criminals have no future and no value to society, don't you know.
Children, on the other hand, can't be raised to be good cogs in the machine if they're permitted to wound each other through "play".
Instead of stabbing people to death with pencils in the courtyard, they would just use a stick from the trees nearby or wait until they are in class and the "weapons" are provided.
Honestly, most bullies I've encountered used fists. FISTS; Not knives or pencils... I say ban the teachers and replace them with a video. Hell, most teachers just tell the kids what pages of their text book to read and answer anyway.
only the bullies will have pencils.
Why not get it straight from the Worcester T&G? Oh right, because the story died already.
Supposed Ban Over
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
Gordon Noseworthy was the superintendent of Silver Lake School District in Kingston, MA 10 years ago. I think they kicked him out of there for crap like this. All I remember is he didn't cancel school during a blizzard, since he's from Canada he felt 3 feet 'wasn't that much'.
The most dangerous thing in schools now-a-days is all that learning. I mean, if people can think critically then they can question your authority, correct? As an added bonus, if they are too dumb to even know what a pencil is then the world would be that much safer. I vote we cut to the chase and ban learning all together.
So the issue is 2 teachers and not the entire school or district.
But still, that any professional involved with education could think pencils are too dangerous for students to carry around, what's next? No books--wouldn't want a paper cut? How long before American public schooling consists of children sitting silently on the floor all day because any action with any object could result in someone getting hurt?
Before you dismiss that as a ridiculous extreme, allow me to point you to the story about 2 teachers who wanted to ban students from bringing pencils to school.
Sure it's only 2 teachers. For now.
Well, having worked with this guy, It seems like somthing that would go on in his school.
Fire that stupid waste of flesh. Do it now.
There is a war going on for your mind.
There is no facepalm.gif epic enough for this situation.
-lowlypeon
This is a great idea. Until reality kicks in. You guys remember classroom supplies? The box of crayons that were all broken and had missing colors. The extra book in case you forgot yours that was expanded from getting wet and had torn pages and smelled like cheese. I'm pretty sure that the pencil box will soon be full of broken pencils with missing erasers and there will not be enough for everybody to have one. How will little Billy fill in the bubbles without a #2?
While we are at it, lack of sleep impairs a child's learning ability. Doing homework often keeps kids up late at night. So, homework impairs a child's ability to learn!
This _has_ to be a nefarious plot by Microsoft to force PC's onto students.
Quite painful. I'm so traumatized I 'll probably have to use these expensive push-pencils for the rest of my life.
And girls, after pencils that was the most traumatizing thing, they definitely should ban girls. Yes, pencils and girls. Oh and chalk.
Well, even today, people aren't being afraid of being shot with swords.
Except for Like-Likes and Leevers I guess, but even then they only have to worry about it if you have full hearts.
even inmates in jail get pencils.
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There's a reason sporks were invented.
Just another day in Paradise
Last time I checked screwdrivers were not allowed on planes, but pencils were.
Strange... But it's good to know they teach paranoia at school nowadays.
Privacy is terrorism.
No girls here and who uses paper anymore?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
After some of the student essays I've seen, I'm surprised they waited this long.
Back in the 90's a friend of mine was stabbed in the neck with a pencil at school and nearly died. The school did not ban pencils or anything else as a result.
You have violence in schools where the kids don't feel safe. That means huge classrooms where the teachers can't give individual attention (= look for warning signs), lazy principals who do not expel/suspend troublemakers; thereby signaling to the rest of the students that even the worst kids are above the law, and run-down campuses that are filled with gang graffiti.
The answer to solving school violence is surprising simple:
- Hire more teachers and assign them smaller class sizes so they can mentor students instead of being a distant stranger the kids hardly know.
- Hire administrators who aren't so concerned about headcounts/money that they kick out bad students. The troublemakers will never stop unless stopped.
- Hire enough of a janitorial staff to actually keep the campus functional/clean/safe.
In my school we had a swastika on one of the bathroom stalls for all five years I was there. Think of how many other students used the restroom and felt offended/scared by thinking there were racists there. But nobody ever removed it, or any of the Latino gang tags either. So we had stabbings and shootings over turf claims on several occasions, and a bald security monitor get beat up by a crowd of black kids because they thought he was a skinhead.
Every educational problem can be solved by supporting teachers and giving the administrators less power. My parents have been teaching highschool for 30 years and each year it's the exact same set of complaints. The admins funnel the money into their pockets, make the teachers work too hard, and absolutely do not give one single crap about any of the students.
You can directly correlate the decline of the American public school system (at least in California) with the lack of funding going into it; or should I say, the misdirecting of what little funds there are into administrative perks like cell phones and cars and multi-million dollar "consulting" fees.
The country where stupidity know no bounds
Back in first grade I've stabbed some idiot that was trying bully me and was a few years older with a pen into his neck... The guy spent a few days in hospital, i was questioned by the cops but they agreed it was self defense (not that they could anything to someone 6yrs old...), and i got a reputation that prevented people picking fights with me for many years after. Anyway... it's fucking 2010... the last time i wrote anything with a pen/pencil on a piece of paper (if you don't count signatures) was probably half a decade ago, i think it's time to retire the whole "handwriting" thingy from schools.
... and this man works in education? Oddly he seem immune to it.
You cannot ever eliminate all items which can be used to harm people. It's not possible and it not worth working on beyond actual weapons. At some point schools need to focus on schools. The smartest and brightest are the best of our future.
Yes, kids will fight, and they will get hurt. But responding to a non-problem and non-issue and threatening students who bring the basic tools of learning for the last ... ummm ... 300 years is insane.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
When I was in high school I was in the middle of a ring of kids who were pushing me around and calling me names. With anger building up, I tightly gripped my pencil held below my waist. I was interrupted in my thoughts by a teacher intervening, who dragged me off to the principal's office for my treating actions. Fortunately, my parents intervened and convinced the school that I was no danger.
On a similar note, in High school physics, I broke out in an argument regarding another student not returning a book she borrowed. She ended up stabbing my palm with a mechanical pencil, which she claims no harm would have come to me had I not tried to defend my self. I can still see the pencil's mark tattooed into my to this day.
I guess the idiot kids who can't learn for shit because they grew up with computers have gotten to the age where they're idiot adults who can't teach for shit.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
after hearing complaints about how could do more with their hands, starting hand cuffing students at the front doors, still debating on bright orange jump suits as the school uniform and have armed guards potroll the hall so no one will leave class early
warning pointless sig
Back when I went to school, this is 50s and early 60s, they didn't care if you brought your rifle or shotgun to school, and a lot of us frequently did. For like after school go someplace hunting or target shooting, etc. It was absolutely no big deal and NO school massacres, etc. It was a non issue, not even discussed. I toted mine on the school bus, openly.
BEGIN GENERIC RANT
I tell you when all this crap changed, time wise and we started hearing about the massacres and shootings, when they started forced drugging of a huge number of young male kids with ritalin and so on, for the psych crime of being YOUNG MALES. It drives them nuts now, the "cure" is worse than the disease, and they tend to go apesquat. look it up, all the school shootings involved forced drugging of the participants. It is the only common denominator to see, so WHY is this being ignored?
Society has gotten so fucked from the double whammy of the hard left Democrat nannies turning everyone into a weenie who needs governmental supervision, combined with the hard right destroying the economy by job jacking and insider trading, etc, for short term wall street profits, and both of them co-opting government to serve as a shared power accumulation platform so they can keep on with their respective agendas. more big brother nanny state government, more wall street globalist ripoffs.
. It just sucks, but we can't seem to get people to stop supporting the insane and harmful corrupt democratic and republican parties, the ones responsible for this slew of messes. One radical doofus side points fingers at the other radical doofus side, and they have everyone convinced that to support anything but one or the other radical doofuses is somehow wasting your vote or will lead to ..more messes. Well, we have the insanity and messes precisely because of the support those two criminal parties get.
fuck 'em both.
Been watching politics and been involved for decades..this stuff is just so obvious....if anyone supports either of those two criminal gangster organizations..shame on you, just shame on you. Thanks for being part of the problem and not part of the solution.
They're totally succeeding at outstupiding the TSA. I don't think even airports have banned pencils yet.
Pencils don't kill people. People kill people!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
In related news...Charles Norris Jr. banned from bringing his dad to Career Day.
From Why They Don't Need to 'Touch Your Junk' At Israeli Airports.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I attended both private and public schools in the U.S., and I learned far more in private schools. While the level of intellect of the students between schools was largely the same, we were all more engaged in our education at the private schools. The level of intellect and interest of all of my private school teachers (save one), was much higher than in any public school. In public school, I was basically taught how to pass a test, not taught anything relevant other than how to figure out which train would win a race from two different cities at two different speeds. The one exception was at a very small private school (~100 in the whole high school) in which an Algebra teacher was so bad at it that three of us got permission to teach ourselves and finished the book by the end of the year while the rest of the class didn't get nearly that far (and she was let go before the next school year). If there had been such an incompetent teacher in public schools (and there were in my experience), we never would have received permission to go on without the rest of the class, that teacher would have kept his/her job, and we wouldn't have learned nearly as much. The fact that the private school acknowledged the problem and allowed the best solution is astounding if you've only gone to public schools your whole life.
There is a reason that private schools exist: parents want their children to succeed in life, and the best chance that they have in the U.S. is to go to an excellent private school or to be home-schooled. Trusting your children to a government funded school ensures that they will receive the same mediocre education that the vast majority of the population receives.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/11/18/School-Pencil-banning-memo-not-official/UPI-17681290120134/
"Noseworthy said the memo does not represent district policy.
"We never use words like weapons in this context," he said.
The school's principal said no ban was being instituted and the situation has been handled."
A bit blown out of proportion, but ridiculous nonetheless...
If these people had any imagination at all, they'd see the obvious: everything can be used as a weapon or part of a weapon. They'll just have to ban everything, including the kid's clothing, and put their arms and legs in shackles and ball-gags and march them around like they're Dr. Hannibal Lecter, just to be sure that nobody has any opportunity to harm themselves or others. Oh, and they might get to learn something.. so long as they don't get taught anything that could even remotely be used improperly.
Seriously, is this what it's come down to? Between overpaid, underqualified administrators who are more interested in lining their own pockets, teachers who never should have been in the first place who now have tenure, low pay for teachers and crappy conditions for teachers who are good at it and who give a damn about the kids and who end up paying for supplies and books out of their own pockets, I'm amazed that any kid has any chance at all of learning anything!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
In Churchill Manitoba, school buses routinely have a rifle strapped above the windshield, in case the driver should suddenly want to start shooting.
At my 1960's school in Somerset, while still being trained to defend our shores, we were equipped each Monday afternoon with .303 rifles, 10 'blank' cartridges, and bussed to the Quantock hills. Unauthorised, we found that 'Venus' brand pencils, with their white plastic ends as expanding 'wads', made perfect muzzle-load ammunition. A good shot would embed a pencil many inches into a distant chosen tree. Future lumberjacks or archaeologists will find them there. Would that we were allowed to defend our shores nowadays.
You know, if they are allowed to arm themselves with pencils, soon they will advance to rubber bands, then harder weapons. Soon the school will be destroyed by a carelessly handled nuclear warhead!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Does anyone want to place bets that it was a student who tried to pass this off as a teacher-created memo?
This sig no verb.
They could learn how to make bombs, shivs, etc....
Better ban learning too...
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I carried a hunting knife with a 6" blade throughout school. Never knew when you might want one. But then this was rural and 1970's. Back when the world made sense and school administrators weren't so stupid. Are they going to take away my hands and feet next? Martial arts turned me into a lethal weapon decades ago. Bind me.
There is a lot of irony that MA, NY, CA have very restrictive gun laws and high murder + gun death rates. Yet on the other hand Vermont has very lax gun laws (you can just buy a gun and carry it open or concealed) and Vermont also has a very, very low murder rate and gun injury/death rate both in absolute numbers and per capita. Good guns make for good neighbors.
...I know the pen is supposed to be mightier than the sword.... ...but don't these school officials think they're taking things a little too literally?
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
I teach at a small charter high school here in N. AZ. Aside from grading papers, the bane of my existence is that students come to school WITHOUT so much as a single pencil with which to write! They have their cell phone, they have their cigarettes and lighter, and they can afford piercings and tattoos, but not a single pencil! WHAT was that "teacher" thinking?
Weapons of Maths Destruction
Dunno, when I was in school, I had at least one knife on me every single day for most of my school years. Plus lighters and a torch.
End result? Teachers came to me instead of walking down to the main teacher's lounge when they needed to cut anything or start the Buthane in Chemistry.
Now I am working. And I carry a Victorinox Swiss Tool while doing desk work.
So yah, ban all them weapons!!!111
oh thank god for that. i read "no longer allowed to bring pencils or pens" and i misread it as "no longer allowed to bring penises". hum, must be something wrong with me...
"We did nothing when they took our pencils away from us. We did nothing, when they disarmed us by taking our spoons away from us. After that, they took away our bananas."
http://www.myspace.com/video/vid/3108686
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
Get to the root of the problem and ban students.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
What happened to personal responsibility and the understanding that "accidents" happen. Accidents used by be "no fault" back when I was a kid.
The end of the world is nigh.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Why are these two teachers NOT in a mental hospital for the criminally insane?