I’m a knife guy. I carry a Spyderco that I keep sharp with a stone and strop. It will whittle a single hair in two when it’s freshly sharpened. I probably used it 20 times today. Knives don’t bother me.
I carried a knife everywhere as a kid too. Except school. Not because there was any rule that I was aware of (until later in high school), but because school was the one place it was pretty much guaranteed that I’d never need one. The only thing a knife would have been useful for were cutting paper or sharpening pencils and there were better tools for that. When it came to special projects or classes, we had knives, box cutters, power saws or whatever else we needed. The girls chopped food with meat cleavers in Home Economics. But other than those special uses, knives would have been useless.
Occasionally there would be a need to cut off a shoelace or poke a hole in a bottle or something. We used whatever was available. In my 13 years from K-12, I can’t recall seeing anyone ever being unable to do something for lack of a knife. My daughter is in 6th grade now and tells me about school every day. Not once has the lack of a knife been a part of her day’s story.
I’m glad kids can’t take knives to her school. I’m not really worried about knife violence, but carelessness. I can’t count the times she’s been accidentally hit by someone or something while at school. If kids all had knives, she surely would have been accidentally stabbed or cut by now.
When I was in primary school I always carried my lunch to school and my grandmother always included a kitchen knife for me to cut fruit and things with. We all thought it was idiotic when they made me quit. My grandmother was from an older generation (obviously) who assumed that an 8-year-old who cut themselves with a knife had just learned a valuable lesson in being more careful with a knife.
Fuck a pussy-ass pocketnife, students - at least those from proper families - should be required to wear a small sabre or rapier at all times, and encouraged to settle their disputes by dueling. For students of commoner stock, an ax or machete will suffice. Students shall also be given a daily ration of grog.
I’m not arguing that kids shouldn’t be allowed to carry knives ever because some of them might snap and attack someone. I’m talking about school policy and the liability of schools. You’re shooting the messenger. I was around when schools first implemented zero-tolerance policies on knives and other “weapons,” and I now how ridiculous some of those rules got. Example: When I taught Romeo and Juliet, students understood how Mercutio received a fatal injury if they acted out the sword fight in slow motion. A kid volunteered to bring plastic swords. I asked the administration: nope. Plastic swords would violate the weapons policy. We made do with yardsticks. Mercutio died of a fatal splinter.
Edited to add: I didn’t make it clear I was speaking of policies and liabilities.
IANAL, so my knowledge comes strictly from what I and the rest of the faculty were told by the district’s attorneys: If the school has no policy in place, it’s liable. (Schools are put to a higher standard of “premises liability,” we were told.) If a school has a policy in place, and the policy isn’t clearly communicated to staff and students in writing, the school is liable. If the school has clearly-communicated policies in place but doesn’t enforce them, it’s liable. If it does all that but a teacher doesn’t enforce the policy, the school may or may not be held liable, but the teacher probably will be if an injury occurs because of the teacher’s neglect. (That one was emphasized.) While naturally schools are concerned about student safety, liability and the fear thereof has been a driving force behind school policy.
If a school were to allow certain students to carry knives in school merely because they’d completed a knife-safety course, and a chip-totin’ student snapped and attacked another kid, I’m quite confident the school would be found liable for not investigating whether or not the chip-toter was volatile (no psychological testing) and maybe because teen-agers tend to be a volatile group. The facts of the case–the reasons why the kid snapped–wouldn’t matter to liability because the school allowed the student to have a knife.
I’m not arguing whether or not schools should or shouldn’t allow students to carry knives. I’m simply stating that in litigious times, schools, which are held to a high safety standard (and for good reason), are going to be held liable if they allow students to have them based only on a safety course. Personally, I wasn’t too worried about students carrying knives. It was kids having guns in backpacks that worried me. But that’s another topic.
There just isn’t any good reason why a kid needs to carry a knife in school. A “totin’ chip” doesn’t change that and doesn’t make any difference to the security issue.
I’m not advocating zero tolerance rules here - consequences should be intelligently, proportionately applied - but kids shouldn’t carry knives at school.
When I think about the state of American education, I think we can all agree that many problems would be solved if pupils could simply open the battery compartments on calculators on their own. I’m pretty sure this would allow the US to challenge Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea as the best performers on standardized math tests.
We discussed this the other night at dinner with my two public high school students. Their answer matched this one:
To their best knowledge no one has gotten into trouble with them. This is a suburban Midwest high school with about 1200 students. They are on a weather delay, still at home, and I just verified this with them.
Let’s not pretend there’s no psychological component here. Much like CCW permit holders seem to adopt an “I’m one of the good guys” attitude, I’m sure giving a kids knife and a literal chip [on their shoulder] is going to have an affect on some of them. Add in a typical dose of bullying and you’re going to see some stabbings.
Also, a compass has a nice sharp point on it. (Unless they have replaced it with a rubber too or something, which now that I think of it wouldn’t surprise me.)
The burden of making a compelling case should be on those wishing to ban them. I haven’t seen one yet. Care to try?
Keyboards exist.
And if sharp objects like scissors and pencils aren’t actually a problem, then just what is the problem with knives? Seriously. I’m not seeing the case here. It sounds like a policy based on emotion rather than logic. Knives have that symbolic significance as a “weapon” whereas equally dangerous items like pencils and scissors don’t? Is it really just virtue signalling?
You mean no downsides besides the lack of knives? Knives are useful tools with hundreds of day to day uses. Their absence is a huge downside all by itself. I’ve yet to see any upside from banning them to overcome that.