Right now its illegal for a student to carry a knife in a public school. Even a small folding pocket knife one carries for small tasks such as cutting open a package.
One idea: In the Boy Scouts they have what’s called the "totin’ chip". It is a sort of merit badge a scout carries showing they have passed a safety course (not just a knife but also axe and saw) and ONLY if and when they have this chip can they carry or use a knife (or saw or axe). AND such a chip must be shown and surrendered to any scout leader if they deem it necessary. They may also remove the scouts chip if they are using their knife the wrong way for example vandalism, or doing something dangerous. I remember once at camp 2 scouts both lost their totin’ chips for sword fighting with their knives in which one was cut.
Could this work in schools? What if a student could earn the privilege of carrying a knife but only if they had some sort of “totin’ chip”?
On the one hand, I hear what he’s saying: wouldn’t it be nice if we could trust our kids with sharp pointy objects and isn’t true that education is part of that. Yes, it would be nice, and yes, education is part of that.
On the other hand, in most places the school system is spread too thin to accommodate adding weapons to the school day. My daughter’s school (yes, anecdote coming up) is highly rated, and on the “good” side of town. A group of students used Facebook to organize fight day a few weeks ago. Kids were hospitalized. Someone almost lost an eye. Even without weapons, kids are capable of doing dangerous and stupid things. Why add weapons to that mix?
And if they did, most teachers have a legal tool called a pair of scissors.
When I was in Boy Scouts I did have a knife without any totin’ chip. I used it to whittle a neckerchief slide - can’t think of any other use. So if students whittle for arts and crafts, they can have a knife for that.
One girl stuck me with a needle in Home Ec. class. No, no knives need to be there. I live in prime redneck country, they take up pocket knives everyday at school. Along with zippo lighters, snuff cans and the odd fighting star-thingy.
Well, let’s see: In my personal experience, I’ve used my pocketknife in school to unjam staplers, unclog and otherwise repair pencil sharpeners, cut a snag off of a spiral notebook that was catching on things, open packages, loosen models from the platform of a 3d printer, and open battery compartments on calculators, just off the top of my head. I’ve taught students who were using knives to cut cardboard for a project they were working on, and my mom (who was also a teacher) used one to cut up an apple for a kid whose parents kept packing them in his lunch even though he was missing his incisors at the time.
As Voyager mentioned, scissors are allowed. Why are knives allowed when you have two of them connected by a hinge, but not when you only have one of them?
All this can be and routinely is done without allowing students to carry knives on their persons. And a lot of these things, if not all of them, are routinely done with tools that a teacher ordinarily has access to if needed. None of this presents a compelling case for students to carry personal knives.
I routinely carried a pocket knife with me from early primary school all the way through high school. No one cared, except for one or two times someone asked to borrow it or have me do something with it.
Of course, these days, if I was a school kid, I’d be expelled.
We didn’t have much of a problem of kids knifing each other, although it did happen once or twice. We also had kids beating each other unconscious with bare fists, and a couple of my classmates were shot, although not on school grounds.
The problem isn’t the tool/weapon, it’s violence. However, if there is not sufficient resources to police the kids properly they’re probably better off without weapons, and only supervised tool use. Zero tolerance policies, however, are stupid.
The only place in school I remember using really sharp tools was in art class. Other than that, I can’t think of why we’d have any need to have some kind of instrument to open something – who receives small packages in school?
And in classes like shop, cooking, art, etc, they provide that stuff.