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.'"

Comments

Fear mongering 101

[assemblerex]

Sure why not when I could just break a chair leg off and bludgeon someone.

Re:Fear mongering 101

[lgw]

I rememeber a classmate bringing a (sharp) sword to class to show off to his friends. No one made a stink about it, becasue he was unlikely to shoot anyone with it. We just weren't scared back then. There was occasional serious violence, which was briefly interesting, but we just went on with life.

When did everyone become so afraid of everything?

Re:Fear mongering 101

[lgw]

That's the point, isn't it? People intending violence brought guns - pistols usually purchased the night before for $50, and very dangerous to the person standing next to your target. We had 4 shootings while I was in high school. Three were escalations from girlfriend "stolen" -> fist fight -> gunshot (and in all three, if was a person standing next to the intented victim who left in a ambulance). One was the French teacher getting shot in class (I remember being completely unsurprised by that, so I guess she wasn't well liked).

We, students and teachers alike, understood that the people not the weapons were the danger, and someone bringing his Ninja Toys to class was no threat to anything beyond his own dignity.

Re:Fear mongering 101

[Moryath]

Actually, in plenty of schools that's exactly what they will do.

Welcome to the days where school has become nothing but a crappy day-care replacement.

No, I'm serious. In most public schools, the purpose is not for the kids to learn. The purpose is to pay substandard wages to a bunch of idiots who were too dumb to realize what they were really getting into, give them zero support and tools to actually enforce classroom discipline, and then tell them to just keep the kids in the building between the hours of 8 and 5 so the absentee parents can go off to work.

The schools have financial incentive to pack as many fucking kids in per classroom as possible. And even if there is a kid so bad (knifing, bringing guns, obviously bringing drugs, etc), good luck getting rid of the kid. The most you can do is have them sent to "alternative school" for a month, and in the meantime the deadbeat shithead parents are busy getting a lawyer and spinning sob stories to the media about how their "good little angel" is getting a bad rap because of the "racist teacher who obviously hates them."

The whole system is fucking broken. The feds give out money on a per-head basis, so the schools want to pack in as many kids as possible even if it means overloading the rooms. The localities enact truancy laws that stuff the good-for-nothings into schools with the kids who are actually there to learn. 5 of 9 shitheads in black robes say we can't even check for legal status and kick out the worthless leeching motherfuckers who ought to be deported. Parents scream and complain if their "good little gifted angel", who's actually an unmotivated little retard, doesn't get into the same class as the kids who ought to be on an accelerated track. And when little Roshanjam, the 9th son of Shaniqua who has 8 other half-brothers and no daddy for any of them, gets into fights and gangs and knifes people and someone actually hauls him in, there she is crying and screaming "racism" and unwilling to accept that no, her kid is a criminal little punk who has his head straight up his own ass.

Re:Fear mongering 101

[Clandestine_Blaze]

And when little Roshanjam, the 9th son of Shaniqua who has 8 other half-brothers and no daddy for any of them, gets into fights and gangs and knifes people and someone actually hauls him in, there she is crying and screaming "racism" and unwilling to accept that no, her kid is a criminal little punk who has his head straight up his own ass.

and

and in the meantime the deadbeat shithead parents are busy getting a lawyer and spinning sob stories to the media about how their "good little angel" is getting a bad rap because of the "racist teacher who obviously hates them."

How is he telling the truth when the poster has to create completely bullshit scenarios to prop up his argument? Unless he actually knows of a little Roshanjam, who is the 9th son of Shaniqua who has 8 other half-brothers and no daddy for any of them? Heck, the entire post was made up of hypothetical examples. Why not use a real life example, there are plenty out there.

It's trolling when he has to pull completely hypothetical situations out of his ass to prop up an argument, which shows that he's more interested in getting a rise out of people than he is interested in making a point. It almost sounds like he's advocating personal responsibility, but yet he makes a sweeping racial generalization. I agree with personal and parental responsibility and not creating a nanny state, but even I can see that making a legitimate point was not the poster's primary intention.

Wrong headline

[Sonny Yatsen]

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.

Re:Wrong headline

[twidarkling]

Not like homeschooling is a better option, where a parent is free to substitute their own "facts," or leave out certain things completely, crippling the child when they attempt to do anything requiring that knowledge, but the true danger of home schooling is the lack of socialization with people of differing backgrounds, leading to an insular world view that assumes everyone is the same, and an inability to cope with society at large.

Promotion !

[burgessms]

A warm welcome to the future head of TSA.

Trustworthy

[The MAZZTer]

Wendy is too uptight, one night with me she will loosen up, and she might even provide the students with switchblades.

Yeah, THIS site is a respectable, trustworthy source of news.

Re:Ok, seriously

[DarkKnightRadick]

If only this were a singular case of nuttery in this profession.

Re:You know...

[JackieBrown]

You've never visited Nannychusetts, have you? State motto: "We're not happy until you're not happy."

As long as everybody is equally unhappy, then things are fair. What would be unfair is for certain people to be happy when others are not.

It is easier to force everyone down a level then try to give people the means to raise themselves a level.

Since people are so envious of what others have, this also gives the ones taking happiness a power base.

Re:The pen[cil] is mightier than the sword!

[DeathToBill]

Erm, well, according to the fount of all knowledge, Japan has a murder rate of 0.44 per 100,000, less than one tenth the rate in the US.

Still, never let facts get in the way of good old ideology, what?

Re:You know...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

I have long felt that Harrison Bergeron should be required reading in every law school in the country.

On a separate but related note, I am afraid that a significant percentage of registered voters in the US would think your sig is referring to some of Cher's costumes.

Re:The pen[cil] is mightier than the sword!

[jeffasselin]

This is a common argument from americans.

It's also an especially retarded one.

All this leads to is a policy of escalation. I get a gun to defend myself, of course the robbers are going to get guns. Bigger ones too. So then I get a bigger gun, and next thing you know you're being menaced by people with machineguns.

In the end, guns don't help you defend yourself. They only ensure any encounter with something you need to defend yourself against will result in a fatality.

Canadians have, per capita, as many guns as americans do. But 99% of them are hunting weapons, not designed to be used against other people. And in the city where I live (600k people), we have less than one murder per year.

And I don't have to lock my door at night. And I don't need a gun to defend myself.

Re:People love to be outraged.

[GodfatherofSoul]

I worked in a high school for 2 years. Parents don't want to hear that they're kids are brats. They want any evidence they can get to rationalize the myth that poor teachers are the problem with our education system. One quick story...

The junior class at the school was turning into a bunch of fuck-ups. Poor academics, drugs, mediocre sports performance, etc. So, the principal who was a really good guy calls an assembly, sends *ALL* the teachers out except for the VP and has a "man-to-man" talk with the whole junior class. He basically told them they were screwing up their lives and needed to straighten up before they've ruined their opportunity there. Well, all the kids run home and tell exaggerated...scratch that flat out lies about what he said to them. Saying he called them worthless, stupid, etc. This caused an uproar with all the parents bitching to the administration for daring to suggest that their sweet little babies could be anything short of Sainthood-candidates. I'd been working at the school for a while at this point and I knew the deal, and I was a computer lab tech. Kids would come in all the time to hang out during breaks. So, I'd get the lowdown from them and surreptitiously steer them into telling me *exactly* what he said. Of course, it was quite different from the cry baby story they all ran home and told mommy and daddy. And, that's our education system in microcosm. Parents sending less disciplined children to school to be simultaneously educated and parented because so many of them aren't getting the job done at home.

Coincidentally, about 10 years later I found out a friend had attended that school when I struck up a conversation with her mother. Just to reinforce the point, her daughters were habitual skippers (though they did get their acts together). But, she blamed the principal when he threatened police action (I never knew you could be charged with this!) if she didn't get her girls to start coming to classes. Kind of sad to hear her mother saying this, because her daughter was really hot too (really turned me off on the girl after seeing that side of her family).

Who Woulda Thunk It!

[rickshaf]

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?