If you’d read on beyond that part you quoted, you’d find that I said it was too bad that such a drawing would make anyone pause. So I’m not sure why you’re trying to behave as if I’m shocked that a boy would draw such a thing. I must have missed where someone suggested that kids should be expelled or suspended for making drawings like that. We really all should stick to what’s actually being said here, instead of misrepresenting opinions and facts.
I’m 33 and school today is much different than when I attended. We didn’t have police officers on patrol, students bringing guns, anyone threatening teachers, etc etc. It was a rare day that there was a physical fight, and suspensions were so few and far between that it was big gossip if it happened.
I realize there are people near my age who could state the opposite of what I’m saying about my high school, but I find it hard to believe that high school was the same 45 years ago as it is today. From the stories I’ve heard from people older than myself, it certainly sounds different.
A couple years ago, when our oldest daughter was 8 y.o., I bought her a .22 rifle for her birthday. She wanted to bring it in to school for show-and-tell, but I told we couldn’t do that that. So she made a poster that contained photos of her shooting, along with a couple targets w/ bullet holes. It was not a problem… the students enjoyed it and the teacher didn’t get frantic. I guess my point is that not all schools have irrational policies toward drawings & images of weapons.
Indeed. I hope to teach my children that in the event they are subjected to a fight at school, to do their best to end the fight as quickly as possible, by any means necessary, and to deal with the consequences. I got suspended for being beaten up, because the bully at the end threatened to continue beating me up if I didn’t touch his chest.
When it came out, he said “He hit me too! In the chest!”.
My children will not be victims of this, or the system that allowed it to happen.
It probably just proves that I’m weird, but I have a lot less instinctive reaction to pictures of an actual gun, and evidence that it has been used for target shooting (or hunting, if applicable), than I do to drawings of guns.
For some reason, drawings of guns strikes me as potential evidence of unhealthy obsession with guns, while a poster with pictures of an actual gun just shows that this child is interested in guns, and comes from a family that is a lot more comfortable with guns than mine is.
I won’t claim I’m entirely comfortable with an 8 year old being given a rifle, but I can appreciate that that’s a cultural difference between me and Crafter_Man rather than evidence that his child is somehow warped and at risk of growing up to make headlines for shooting someone at school–or even just violating a no tolerance zone. I have no experience with guns and like it that way.
I think that part of it is the evidence of parental involvement. If you show me a sketch of a gun, I have no information about the parents involvement in the creation of the artwork. But if you show me a poster for Show and Tell, and mention that Daddy helped make the poster and wouldn’t let you bring in the actual rifle, you strike me as healthy, involved with your parents, and not really all that weird.
But this is what I’m saying. Yes, these things have happened and will likely happen again, but they’re not common. I graduated in 1999 (at the height of Columbine fever) and no one ever brought a gun to school, there was never a police presence (except when a kid was dealing drugs out of his locker and the police came to arrest him) and the only people that threatened teachers were the braindead fuckups who would have threatened teachers in your day.
I only remember a handful of fights (and only witnessed one) and I only remember an equally small number of people being suspended. From people I know that go to this high school now, not much has changed.
Re-reading this, now that it’s been posted for a few minutes, I think I should clarify that I don’t really think that an individual drawing of a gun, or even a series of drawings of guns is strong evidence that the person doing the drawing is a risk. But I still think that Crafter_Man’s example of his daughter’s poster is a poor example of a school not overreacting to pictures of guns, because the context is so different from artwork scribbled on the margins of the notebook during class time.
Little boys and young men are blood thirsty little monsters. Any reputable psychiatrist who has studied children’s art will tell you that from roughly ages 8-15, the subject material is comprised of conflict images. Monsters, mutants, bombs, explosions, guns, sword fights, pirates, and in the latter stages, fast cars, motorcycles, and anatomically impossible females. It is perfectly normal subject material for the age, and the overreaction to it is nothing short of completely asinine. Drawing on the right side of the Brain has several chapters about developmental stages in art, as well as the reasons that so many of us stop drawing at a young age.
I wouldn’t be worried about the 12 year old who draws guns, so much as I’d be worried about the ostracized loner acquaintance who corrects the technical aspects of the doodle.
And I carried a .25 semi-auto pistol to school every day of my junior year…
25% of the boy cars in the parking lot had rifles or shotguns in them… Some of the girl cars too.
I graduated in 1984. While I was in high school (in a different district) someone shot a teacher in South Minneapolis and someone else shot a student in the parking lot. I think you are right, not much has changed. Some schools are safer than others.
The thing is, kids do bring guns to school - they’ve brought them in for a long time - they brought them in in the 1950s. And these kids sometimes shoot other kids and teachers.
My own experience from dealing with my son’s imagery is that teachers are aware of the difference between boys being boys and boys being dark and brooding. From what my son’s teacher said, if they suspended every third grader who draws guns, they’d only have girls in class. But when images in art are combined with other signs of abuse, neglect, depression, anger management issues, etc., then they get the school social worker involved. And suspension is usually something that happens after the social worker has been involved and there isn’t improvement - often to jar parents into NEEDING to reinforce or change an environment at home.
High school class of 1999. I’m so glad I got out just before most of the zero-tolerance stuff hit. They would have forbidden me to wear half of my clothes to school – I learned the value of intimidation from a distance early on, after being yanked out of an elementary school because other people were bullying me, and I used to wear a lot of dark suits and long coats in the winter. My main consolation is that my mother is kind of crazy, to put it mildly, and had they tried to pull any of this on me, there would have been a pack of ravenous lawyers involved before the school could finish filling out my suspension slip.
It’s sad that you had to say anything in the first place, but the way you explained it to the lil’ Doper is probably best. There are some things you really do want to teach your kids to worry about, and unfortunately, people with no common sense is one of the big ones.
I have a second-grade kid in my class who, when asked to write about his idea of the perfect life, wrote something like, “The perfect life for me would be to live in World War II, because then I would get to carry a flamethrower.” He was supposed to draw a picture along with the writing, so he drew a picture of himself and several of his classmates in world-war-2 uniforms, helpfully labeled with names, including one girl who was clearly dead from massive trauma.
This kid is fine. He’s friends with that girl. He means nothing by it.
But that’s still not going up on my bulletin board.