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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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?
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Based on the rest of your post, I don't think you are advocating this position (merely stating why someone would do this). Still, I'd suggest that anyone who agrees with this notion to read Harrison Bergeron, where "equality of outcome" is the central theme. This is where we will eventually be led.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
That's nothing.
At 8.5 months gestation I took a deep breath and self-delivered.
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