“A five year old who had a bright yellow, green and purple toy gun which shoots sponge bullets [I’m thinking it’s NERF or nothing] was suspended for 10 days from Duchesne Elementary School of Ferguson/Florissant School District,” examiner.com reports. It’s not clear if the kindergartener used the toy to extort lunch money or jump the queue at the slide. No matter. “Katie Sanders, principal of Duchesne Elementary sent a letter home informing parents of the incident. In her letter she said, ‘providing a safe environment that allows children to learn is our first priority. Please take this opportunity to remind your children that no weapons of any kind are allowed on school property and encourage them to report unsafe situations.'” I find the school’s inflexible PC attitude unsafe. Does that count?

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52 COMMENTS

  1. WTF! I’m betting the child doesn’t even understand why he’d been suspended. Whats wrong with these people and our country!?

    • “I’m betting the child doesn’t even understand why he’d been suspended.”
      ——
      Yeah, they think they’re teaching these kids respect for authority. What they’re actually doing is teaching distrust of authority. Which, when you think about it, isn’t such a bad thing.

    • It was not an object lesson for the child. It was a lesson for the parent who will have to stay home from work for two weeks because the kid isn’t in school that all guns–including obviously toy guns (which by definition are not a “weapons”), as well as fingers–are unacceptable in a “civilized” society.

    • Paranoid people should not have guns. The police should ask the father what in the hell was he thinking. Or wasn’t.

    • I wonder when these same people will demand that Florida be re-shaped until it no longer resembles a gun.

    • “effective immediately, the school now has a no fun policy. This is to ensure the children grow up in a safe, fun environment, without having to worry about little billy packing deadly, evil black foam darts in our hallways. Think about the children!”

  3. Yes, please! By all means, continue the pussification of our society. What the actual fvck is that principal using for brains, anyhow? And is MikeB the superintendant of schools in that district?

    • “And is MikeB the superintendant of schools in that district?”

      No–but he’s a former student and surviving victim of a nasty squirt gun assault. Now he’s their chief consultant.

    • You must not have kids. Schools have outlawed cops and robbers (oh those evil fingers, we’ll have to dut them off!) as well as plastic toy soldiers carrying guns. That’s true–a kid got suspended for bringing an Army man to school. Don’t remember what state. My wife told me that they outlawed cowboys and indians and cops and robbers (I was shocked–SHOCKED!– I tell you, even moreso that my wife thought this was perfectly OK.

      • Actually, I have three in elementary school right now. I am very familiar with the ridiculous concept of “zero tolerance”.

  4. My child was sent home once because he had a GI Joe action figure with a M4 in hand in his backpack. I couldnt stop smirking as the teacher and principal attempted to explain their point during the subsequent meeting.

    • Yup. Another “teachable moment” wasted. Teachers just aren’t as good as they used to be, squandering opportunities like this.

      • I don’t know. I keep on hearing about these young teachers being sent to jail for teaching young boys how ti “aim”.

  6. Ah, zero tolerance…. this happens all the time. I saw one at the Free Range Kids blog where a grade schooler superglued several cast-plastic toy soldiers to the bill of his cap as a tribute to a neighbor who was serving in Iraq, and got suspended because the toys were holding inch-long Garands.

  7. I am very thankful that I have no children. I would have to be carted off site after my child was treated in this manner. Someone can do more damage with a pencil, spork, book, keyboard, hell…even a paperclip and rubber band. People in society have lost their minds.

  8. This level of hysteria is supposed to be exhibited by pre schoolers sufferring from “Boo Boo’s”. Not the adults that’re supposed to be guiding and educating the kids.

  9. “that no weapons of any kind are allowed on school property ” at which point everyone was forced outside to police up all the sticks and stones before broken bones ensued…

  10. He should have known better u can’t bring a gun to school with a cwp. That’s stupid they should have just taken it away.

  11. “Please take this opportunity to remind your children that no weapons of any kind are allowed on school property and encourage them to report unsafe situations”

    I don’t see the mention of a weapon of any kind in the article, nor an unsafe situation. Very confusing.

    • That was EXACTLY my first thought also. Toys manufactured by a TOY maker and sold in a TOY store in the TOY department that shoot TOY sponges are not weapons, they are TOYS! And a college educated teacher that can’t understand or figure that out needs to go back to their alma matter and ask for a refund of their tuition.

  12. Pathetic — yes, surprised no.

    Given the schools are so PC now that you can no longer have Halloween, its not Harvest Festival. You can no longer have Thanksgiving (Its Autum Celebration) because you may offend an Indian — either American or Asian. In one California school district you cannot even have an American Flag patch because it may — “offend those who are not from the USA”

    There have been plenty of stories of kids being suspended simply by making a pistol using their finger. Someone I know was reported to the police for child endangerment because when the teacher asked his little boy what he was doing this weekend, the boy replied “Me and daddy are going to clean his guns” — yes, the PD and all the various agencies got involved for that simple statement.

    Our schools are so damn busy being PC, of course our whole education system is behind. They now hand out pages of books you are not allowed to do book reports on because they are banned — yep, no Huckleberry Finn because it contain sections that are not PC. At the same time, school districts in areas like Chicago where “52 percent of 4th-graders scored “below basic” in reading proficiency in 2011” That is up 14 points (previously 66%) and was the reason the Chicago teachers unions wanted a big raise — LOL! Really! I once had an argument with a teacher on the train to work that “Columbus did not land in the United States”

    It kills me, because when I grew up kids would take their BB guns to school for show and tell. It would come in the morning and you handed it to the teacher who checked it and locked it up, then it came out for show and tell and was handed back at the end of the day. And, my high school had a shooting range in the basement for the rifle team.

    This stupid no tolerance ultra hyper PC stuff ruines schools instead of making them more competative. The home schooling movement is getting bigger everyday and it is because of stupid stuff like this.

    It is true what they say, “common sense is not common” — call me silly, but I would of taken the offending object away, called Mom and Dad and told them — look, no big deal but make sure the toy stays home next time — done!

    • I suppose pointing out that Columbus really didn’t land in the United States (or anything that would become the United States) is pointless, huh?

      • and 500 years after Leif Ericsson and his viking compatriots to boot. Ericsson’s private enterprise failed to remain in Newfoundland. The “other guy” had backing of the state of Spain, and look where that left the natives. Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, germs and steel” offers some interesting ideas as to how the Europeans came to dominate the globe starting around 500 years ago.

  13. I can’t be shocked any more! Their hatred for guns and their need to force that opinion on everyone else cannot be hidden! Absolutely remarkable!!!!!!!

  14. The ignorance of educators in this country never ceases to amaze me. No warning or discussion before the suspension and all over a nerf gun. I would love to hear how that nerf TOY endangers safety. Also, why would you punish a five year old who probably doesn’t even understand what is going on? They are in kindergarten for goodness sake. The sooner the country gets rid of school administrators like that, the sooner we improve our education system.

  15. The teacher must have felt threatened!! Everyone knows how dangerous a five year old can be with a nerf gun!!!
    Why he might have stuck a dart to the teachers forehead an left a red mark, thus causing her to lose her place in line for the principals affections and causing her to lose her contract for next year!!!
    What an idiot!!! Yep home schooling is on the rise!!! My fiancée and I are seriously considering taking her daughter (11yrs old) out and home schooling her.
    Wonder what the PC schools are going to use for an excuse when there are no students in school and funding goes away??!

  16. The school district has also banned testicles, exposed or concealed, because they upset the school administrators who don’t have any.

  17. What do you expect from a top notch school…”SchoolDigger Ranks Duchesne Elementary 782nd of 1051 Missouri public elementary schools”. Impressive since Missouri education is ranked 33rd.

  18. “I find the school’s inflexible PC attitude unsafe.”
    — It is unsafe as it it attempting to embed a lesson to the students that guns are flat-out wrong and dangerous rather than being a tool that like other tools can be used for good and bad.

    The war against school boys and instilling in them traditional masculine values and virtues goes on and on. An inverse correlation(?) can be identified with the dramatic rise of feminism and political correctness in the nanny-police state with the long-term decline of American masculinity, liberty, political power, and economic health.

  19. Words can be weapons. What about words? Are they controlling the words used? What about fists? How are they going to ensure that a pair of fists don’t just show up unannounced at school one day and suddenly go off accidentally? Then, there are all of those stabbing tools, pencils, pens, letter openers, etc. OMG! the horror! Pull your children from the public schools now! There is no place safe for them!

    Sorry, I got a little excited there. 😉

    • They actually do ban fists. At my kids’ elementary school, kids were not allowed to make a “gun” shape by pointing their index finger, and were not allowed to make fists or play any game that involved imaginary violence or any kind of aggression.

      I’m all for peace on the playground, but this kind of emotional repression can’t lead to anything good.

    • You are onto it all. Go check out the dot com sites:
      AngryHarry
      manywomanmyth

      Winston Churchill:
      “The women’s suffrage movement is only the small end of the wedge, If we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers and husbands.”

  21. Five bucks says this school has no playground equipment, ten bucks says it does but none of it is wood, fifteen says it’s cordoned off and disused.

  22. Speaking as an educator, I’ll be the first one to admit that the environment is sometimes hostile to boys, and issue of “weapons” in the educational environment. 10 days does seem a bit extreme for bringing a NERF gun to school, but the article doesn’t say anything about how the gun was used, why it was brought, or the student’s behavior history – which should all be factors in discipline in any well-run school.

    Was the NERF gun used to threaten other kids, or was the intention innocent (show & tell)?
    Did the student actually pull the NERF gun in class and play with it, or was it just sitting in his backpack the whole time?

    For example, a student with a history of bullying / fighting with other students can get a multi-day suspension just for writing a list of students’ names and calling it “MY LIST OF PEOPLE TO KILL”. He doesn’t even have to have a weapon for the suspension to happen as long as educators can prove his past behavior.

    I think it also bears mention that many PARENTS these days aren’t doing their job by teaching their kids that toys belong at home, not at school. Of course, teachers get blamed for everything – fatherless kids, broken homes, poverty, TV, video games, etc.

    • I agree with you 1000% that parents must be involved.

      I have yet to see teachers get blamed for anything although I do agree they must deal with fatherless kids, broken homes, poverty and other social and economic issues.

      In this specific case even without all the facts — its a “Kindergartener”. We are talking 5 or 6 years old. They have been in school for just over a month at this point. Unless there was a daily cronic issue, 10 days is way too much I don’t care what the kid may or may not have done.

  23. Seriously RF this isn’t April fools!!!!
    Oh wait this was in a school for the indoctrination of subjects, sorry my bad!

  24. This sort of thing goes on all the time . Here are the folks educating your kids:

    What are the largest unions in the US?

    NEA – National Education Association – 2,679,396

    AFSCME – American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees – 1,350,000

    AFT – American Federation of Teachers 770,090

    homeschool or private school. the kids will perform better either way, and they don’t get the daily dose of PC indoctrination.

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