Why do we always have to go through this? What does being in the South have to do with it? :rolleyes: (And then again…can you consider Florida to be part of the “backwards” South?) I get so tired of hearing these dumb generalizations about the South being so backwards and redneck.
With regards to the OP: I think the response was definitely over the top. I do think that if these boys would have drawn these pictures and then made good on their “threat” we’d have another pit thread about why their teachers/parents/counselors were letting them draw such pictures and not getting them any help.
9 or 10 is a young age, and one may not fully understand one’s actions at that age, but 9 and 10 year olds are perfectly capable of harming themselves and other kids. I think there should have been some concern on the part of the school, considering the past ten years with things like Columbine and the litigious society that we live in, but arresting the kids is too extreme.
When I was in grade four, me and several of my buddies would bring wooden swords and shields to school, on the bus, no less, and have epic battles on the school ground. A few short years later, with a change in principal-ship, we could no longer play tackle-football, throw snowballs, whatever. But at the time, the teachers knew us boys to be good kids, not prone to random acts of violence. I am sure that had some of the more bully-ish kids brought wooden swords they would have been confiscated right aways.
In this same school, now about 20 years later, my kids can’t walk through a shallow puddle wearing rubber boots, it is against the rules!
The world is insane. Absolutely bat-shit crazy insane.
Just hypothetically, what if the drawings had been extremely detailed and lifelike, showing in graphic and disturbing detail the hanging and stabbing of their classmate? I’m talking recognizable facial features on the classmate, realistic blood dripping down the classmate’s arms and pooling up on the ground beneath his dangling body, and maybe one of the artists draws a little self-portrait of himself doing a grinning victory dance next to the body.
Would this be a different story? Just curious; a lot of the anger here seems to be spurred by the fact that it was “only stick figures,” as though the fact that the drawings were crudely done indicates that the defendants weren’t serious.
What if they spent hours on these drawings (that’s “drawings,” plural), but they just don’t have any artistic skills and that’s why they’re “stick figures”? What if they waited for the kid on his way home from school, showing him the pictures and saying, “This is what we’re gonna do to you”?
What if they were drawing cartoons of YOUR child being stabbed and hung, labeled with your child’s name? Just curious.
Oh, and duffer, if you have to see the world in your moronic black-and-white terms, could you please keep it in threads started for the purpose? You really just sound like an obsessive asshole. And this is coming from a guy who voted against Clinton both times.
Although it referred to drugs, not violence, the earliest use I remember of the term ‘zero tolerance’ was in description of extremely draconian drug laws in which a minuscule amount of a controlled substance resulted in forfeiture of vehicles, boats, etc.
Even worse, these laws didn’t make exceptions for cases where, say, a mechanic who worked on a customer’s car left a stubbed out joint in the ashtray.
These federal laws were enacted during the administration of George H. W. Bush.
Given that just about every single poster has agreed that the actions in the OP were idiotic, and given that (as we know) the SDMB is heavily liberal, wouldn’t you agree that liberals don’t, in general, seem to agree with policies like this?
C’mon, you can still claim that we’re all idiotic mindless bush-bashing terrorist-lovers, if you want, but try yielding just an inch on this issue. It might be therapeutic.
Eh. Drawing violent stick figures is at LEAST as bad as sticking one’s tongue out at reporters. We all know how frenzied you got about that one, eh, mate?
Ummm…to the folks who quoted and reponded to me post can I please direct you to my first paragraph:
I don’t agree with them being arrested either. I was responding the sugestion that this was, not just not a crime (which it isn’t) but perfectly ok. And that any action taken against children intimidating each other was somehow infringing on there rights as a male. As for my reaction “pussifying” :rolleyes: I would call it less rightious indignation than sarcastic irritation
That’s a lot of what ifs there. Does a bunch of what ifs justify dragging someone out of grade school in handcuffs? What if a meteor hits the earth? What if pigs fly? What if roaches replace humans as the dominant species? What if King Arthur returns? It doesn’t matter if it was stick figures or a genuine work of art. The reaction was grossly out of line in any SANE person’s view. Even we liberals and conservatives, Dems and Repubs agree on this one.
Understood. I reacted more to the huge disparity in your annoyance vs. the OP issue. Sometimes people do just that as a deliberate derailment. My apologies.
When I was in… I think it was seventh, maybe sixth grade, I was playing soccer at P.E. when this big kid, Ramsey, came out of nowhere and clothelined me. No reason for it at all. Ramsey was generally a decent guy, although we weren’t exactly friends, and looking back at it, I think he was just over-excited about the game and wasn’t really thinking. At the time, however, I was super pissed at him. During the lunch break that day, me and my friend Rob filled a good twenty pages of binder paper with cartoons of Ramsey being slaughtered in various inventive ways. It was, for me, a really positive and cathartic way of working out my anger at the guy without getting into a confrontation with him. (Which would have gone very badly for me. I was a pudgy little kid. Ramsey was a fuckin’ beast. He’d have pounded me into putty if I’d tried to fight him.) I stuffed the drawings in my binder and forgot all about them until a couple weeks later, when I pulled all of the random doodles and drawings out of my binder and threw them out.
Turns out, one of the drawings I made of Ramsey was on top of the stack, and he saw them. He fished the stack out, tracked me down at recess, and demanded to know what the deal was with them. I think he was looking for a fight. I told him I drew them after he’d clocked me in soccer last month for no reason. He looked surprised, then apologized for hitting me. I told him no hard feelings, and we were, if not friends, at least friendly until we started different high schools. Haven’t seen him since.
The moral? Kids need to sort these things out on their own. Learning how to do that is the entire point of being a kid. It genuinely worries me what the current generation is going to do when they become adults and have still not learned these skills. I do not think it bodes well.
The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.
The exercise of this right may be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; or
(b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.
[/QUOTE]
Somalia and the United States are the only two countries in the world that haven´t ratified the Convention on the Rights of Children, Somalia can´t because it doesn´t have a recognized goverment.
It sounds like they violated the hell out of this convention. When Somalia signs up, guess who will be the only nonsignatory.
Oh, there was Article 13, para. 2(b). “national security” in there. That covers it all :rolleyes:
[Chief Wiggum]Remember boys, these are little kids, so take out your tiny batons. … [/Chief Wiggum]
I can’t believe this got to two pages without the obligatory Simpsons reference. Of did I miss it amoung all the political sniping?
When I was in High School a friend and I used to write stories about people we didn’t like with all sorts of bad and strange things happening. Although, we never actually had them die in the stories, preferring to have them suffer. I had no idea we were such little felons.
I agree “zero tolerance” has gone too far if it involves handcuffing 6 to 10 year olds and carting them off to jail to be charged with felonies. Even if the idea is to “scare them straight” that’s just too much, have the cops talk to them but cuffing and jail, no. Whatever happened to calling the parents? I am actually surprised that the police departments go along with this since it seems to be a lawsuit waiting to happen.
In this story, a first-grader gives a bag of “rocks, clover and dirt” to her friend as a gift. The teacher looks at it, and decides it’s weed. :smack: Dunno what kinda shit the teacher smoked in college, and I’m no expert regarding smokable plants, but I’d know the difference between clover and marijuana. So, because the teacher was a dumbfuck, and the principal was a dumbfuck, the child gets a 2 day in school detention. Jumping Jesus in a Buick Roadmaster! If a kid takes a piss in a pop bottle does that mean he’s got Chardonnay? Dammit! Stupid asshats in charge of our kids. :mad:
