It appears that the PC’ism in the public school system has finally gone full circle and become a parody of itself: Yesterday in my son’s school, they announced over the intercom that, when exiting the building, there will be absolutely no snow-ball throwing tolerated. Should someone break this rule and dare to engage in this time-honored youthful playfulness despite this doctrine, THE POLICE WILL BE CALLED AND THE OFFENDING STUDENT(S) WILL BE ARRESTED AND CHARGED WITH ASSAULT.
I’m guessing that’s a case of somewhere someone embedded a rock in a snowball and someone needed stitches. And if snowballs are flying, its hard to figure out who threw the one with the rock in it.
They did not go into any details, and I’d bet that, if pressed, they would not know the answers to such complicating questions themselves. They would get flustered, and stammer, and contradict themselves, and finally be strangled and tangled up in their own bullshit. I’ve seen it a thousand times.
You see, it’s just a bluff. They want to be sure that their asses are covered in case anyone gets hurt. They live in cowering fear of 1. of ill-tempered parents, and 2. the local media. IF someone gets hurt, they want it on record that they issued the warning. That’s what our sue-happy society has gotten us. Shit, when I was a kid we used to shoot home-made bow-and arrows everywhere all the time. One time, I almost broke a window, but no one ever got hurt. If you trust children, they instinctively feel respected and behave responsibly. IMHO.
My initial reaction was laugh, snort, disgust at the idiotic person on the other end of the PA system, but the other emails raise an interesting point about rocks, makeshift bombs, or whathaveyou, being crudely concealed in said snowball. The moral of the story for me is that it’s such a shame that the childhood I experienced is gone forever because of the society we live in today.
It’s a crying shame that we have to tie up police resources for bullshit like that when for all we know there could be an abundance of real crimes happening nearby while the cops frisk a snowball-thrower.
Oh, forgot to add one thing - the assault charges seem extreme, but does the school regularly make it a habit to involve the law rather than other disciplinary action? When I was in school, the penalty was a talking-to from the principal and a call home, but that actually worked on most students back then. (I should know, I got caught once!) Maybe these days it doesn’t.
Probably the biggest difference between ‘today’s society’ and yesteryear, particularly in America (although this may be a terrible misconception of mine, in which case please correct me and I’ll have an apology standing by) is the threat of litigation from parents of children injured in such incidents; 25 years ago the kids would have returned home with bloodied nose and taken a damn good thrashing and be sent to bed with no supper for getting blood on their shirts, then later the parents would laugh it off as the crazy antics of young 'uns.
You are twisting my words. There’s a difference between advising students on common courtesy and safe conduct, and criminalizing youthful exuberance. Give me a break.
And I don’t want to hear that times have changed and how nowadays anything can happen. That is such a bullshit cliche. If it is that way now, it’s because we make it that way; because we allow stupid little things to become criminalized. I don’t believe that we live in more dangerous times than ever. No matter what the times, people have always believed that about the times they respectively lived in. In the 60’s and 70’s the old folks used to moan and groan and say, “oh, what kind of a world this is nowadays.” Shit, according to one of my old teachers, 4000 years ago they were already complaining about “today’s youths”. And in 20 years we will look back on the early 2000’s as the peaceful, good-ole’ days. No, we don’t live in times that warrant such over-the-top policing more than before.
On second thought, I think it probably isn’t and never was a good idea to whip snowballs at people – I got caught up in the moment and was remembering a glorified version of snowball fights. BUT, I think it is a sad result of the society we live in today that declares that the snowballer will be in police custody and charged with assault. In my day, we would have just gotten in really, really Big Trouble, and the threat of having to sit in Mr. Gray’s office would’ve done the trick.
And, of course, on the wacky chance that we had parents who would actually punish us for defying authority and not sue the school for infringement on our rights, we would have been afraid of them too.
There’s no possibility whatsoever, of course, that the principal was making an ill-considered bluff. None at all, because school administrations never sink to such levels as lying to students.
Snowball fights weren’t allowed on school grounds for me, either. That was about 15 years ago. The rule meant nothing. It didn’t take long for us kids to figure out that if you couldn’t bring the snow up from the ground to the person…
This particular practice was called ‘dumping’ and it was never banned. I imagine more kids got hurt from being waist-tackled and then having as much snow as possible shoved into their coats than from any snowball.
Ah “white washes” now those really suck- getting your face rubbed in the snow (and shoved down your back). Jeese I had forgotten how sucky it was to be a kid at times.
Sorry-- wasn’t my intention at all.
BTW: schools cannot criminalize anything. They do not have the power to do so. While they can call the cops if they want- the cops and the juvinile justice system, not the Principal Skinner wanna-be determine what a crime is. But, if getting hit in the face with a thrown rock is assualt, getting hit with a rock hard iceball could be as well. However, criminal intent is probably lacking in this instance.
While the warning was laughably stupid in its execution, the idea of preventing injuries was probably laudable. Our “Skinner” needs to go back to the basics; detention, suspension and writing out “I will not throw snowballs” a thousand times. Threats of calling the police should be saved for serious offenses, like hiding the teacher’s editions of the textbooks from the teachers.
