So why is it that kinder gardeners in Denmark are taught to safely use knifes? (heck, this kid is using a fixed blade knife, not even the kind I’m talking about) yet here in the US even a tiny folding pocket knife can get a kid expelled?
Notye - I am talking a small possible Swiss army knife likeTHIS which also has scissors and nail file.
I should also add in they Danish children are taught to use fire, climb trees, and use outdoor toilets.
Extremely useful skills in the suburbs.
Because at some point in the past few decades our society went collectively insane. As noted in this thread it used to be routine for kids of all ages to carry pocket knives with them at school.
But then instead of dealing with the causes of increased violence society decided to deal with the symptoms instead and instituted stupid zero-tolerance policies.
Nu, so we should be more like Denmark now? You know they’re socialists, right?
Serious answer: because entirely different cultures, backgrounds, and priorities? Because here in 'Murica we believe teaching knife safety is not a job for public educators?
More importantly, because it’s not even something that’s commonplace in Denmark? I can find you schools in the US that teach knife safety; it’s no more a part of general public education in Denmark than it is in the US.
Broomstick, of course I’m not saying that knife use should be restricted to boys. I (and the OP, of course) am just using the Boy Scouts’ procedure as a model that schools could follow. I don’t know how the Girl Scouts do things; I would have guessed that they had a similar procedure. If, as you’re saying, they don’t even have that and just allow the kids to use knives, that’s an even stronger argument that knives should be allowed.
As to the argument that knives have no use in a school: I always carry a pocketknife, because I find uses for it all over the place, and that includes in a school environment. I’ve already given numerous examples for how I’ve used it. This is not at all parallel to the gun argument: Guns have only one use, and if that use becomes relevant in a school, it’s because someone screwed up very badly. But knives have all of the same uses in a school as they do out of it.
As for what I said about shop or art class and a bunch of kids being exposed to those tools for the first time: Yes, those classes will start with safety training for whatever dangerous tools are being used. And after you finish the safety training, what happens? You have 20 kids at once start using those tools, and the single teacher has to watch all of them at once to make sure that they’re all following those safety rules. It’d be a lot easier if the students were gradually exposed to such tools over the course of their schooling, and then when you got to art class, you could know which students had already earned their chip and were in good standing on it, and give them first access to the tools while the others are learning, and maybe the experienced ones will even help you to watch out for rules violations.
You should have brought a screwdriver. Up to 7 inches is allowed.
There are trade-offs to everything. Some kids, let’s say 10 per year, have been stabbed by pencils and the trade-off is that millions of kids have gotten an education using pencils.
So we introduce knives. For arguments sake, let’s say violence doesn’t rise, but there are now 5 knife and 5 pencil stabbings per year. A knife will do more damage in most cases so there’s some increase in the amount in pain, suffering and medical bills that wasn’t there before. I could end this now and ask my final question, but let’s go ahead and talk about accidents.
There will also be accidents. A friend of mine recently cut his hand and needed four stitches. The bill was $3500. He drove himself to the hospital. When a kid is involved, they’ll probably call an abundance, so it would be more like $35,000. Then there’s the cost of lawsuits, and there will be lawsuits.
I don’t know the cost of all this but there will undeniably be some cost. How much extra are people willing to pay on their property tax to cover all this? Because around here they bitch like crazy at .1% to fix roads.
But everything has tradeoffs, maybe people will with the benefits. What are the benefits to the educational system we’re getting in this trade-off? Nothing whatsoever.
At least my boat idea from kindergarten would have brought kids joy and taught them driving skills.
Do you call 911111111111111111111111111111111111111?
Are we doing “phrasing?”
No, that would be a long distance call. Always get your abundance of ambulances locally.
Yes, but enalzi’s dispute seemed to be that a pocket knife is a weapon because people have been stabbed with them. By that logic, a pencil is also a weapon. enalzi didn’t mention anything about other benefits, school culture or systems in place.
As a reference, an online dictionary I just consulted defines a weapon as “An instrument of attack or defense in combat, as a gun, missile, or sword.” Furthermore, when I said pocket knives weren’t weapons, I was responding to another poster who claimed they were designed as weapons. I found that declaration to be absurd. No soldier, security guard, assassin, or murderer ever “armed” themselves with a folding pocket knife and considered themselves ready for duty. Are there cases of a pocket knife being used as a weapon? Yes. As I pointed out, there are also cases of pencils being used as a weapon. That doesn’t make them weapons, either, anymore than playing stickball with a broom handle makes your broom a baseball bat.
Is it your argument that the difference between a weapon and a tool is the number of beneficial uses you can come up with in a school environment? Or is it something more basic than that? Like, its intended and historical usage?
The case has been made that pocket knives should be banned from school. I’m not convinced, but there are a whole lot of things I fundamentally disagree with about the way schools are run, and this is just one of very many. But I hope we can all agree that a pocket knife is not a weapon by any reasonable definition of the word.* “Attack or defense in combat” is not its intended use, its predominant usage, or even something it’s well suited for. And comparisons to self defense rights or the 2nd Amendment are frankly laughable.
*Except for particular situations in which they are used as a weapon, but in that case pencils, hair pins, kitchen pans, bits of plumbing, wrenches, rope, chain, etc are also “weapons”. But we don’t call grandma’s frying pan a weapon in day to day language or make policy decisions based on its status as a weapon, even though it could, possibly be used as a weapon.
Like opening a battery compartment?
It’s the darndest thing; I’ve opened a billion little battery compartments, and I cannot ever remember using a knife to do it. My fingers seem to work quite well, actually. Maybe I’ve used a screwdriver on one that are actually fixed in place with a screw.
If you have a pocket knife on you and are determined to find uses for it I am sure you will find a thousand uses for it where you could well have just used something else. If all you have is a thing for pocket knives, everything starts to look like it needs to be jabbed with a pocket knife. If you don’t carry one at school you’ll never miss it. Children are not hard done by for a lack of knives at school. I am still waiting for the first ever time on of my kids, or one of their friends, or one of my nephews, comments about how damn inconvenient the lack of knives at school is.
The snark is entirely unnecessary. I used to carry a knife for work, and got used to it, so I just kept it inn my pocket all the time. And yeah, your point is totally right: I used it a lot, because I had it and because I was comfortable with it.
Of course, my life is no poorer without carrying it. But I’d definitely take some umbrage at the suggestion that I “had a thing for knives.”
Thank you.
For the life of me, I can’t imagine what prompted the OP to post this to begin with.
Either that, or it’s a stronger argument for girls to be allowed knives…
Nope, had no such “totin’ chip” among the girl scouts. Then again, at least when I was in scouts, I never heard of girls having “sword fights” between each other, either. This could be a behavioral difference between genders, whether cultural or innate I don’t know.
Um… no, that’s not it happened when I took shop. We were told the rules, tested on our understanding of them, then had to demonstrate to the instructor our ability to use them safely. There were typically a limited number of truly dangerous tools, which limited how many people the shop teacher had to watch. My shop class was also all of 12 people, they were kept small (Which might have been part of the outrage at the time at letting a girl be in one - OMG! Displacing a boy! But in that case, being the only girl, it wasn’t a boy/girl difference but was the standard difference)
I’ll grant you that small, utility-style pocket knives aren’t designed as weapons, and that they are less effective as weapons than purpose-built fighting blades. That said, due to having a sharp blade, they are likely more damaging if used as weapons than most items a grade schooler would otherwise have access to in their school supplies.
Note that I regularly carry a pocket knife – a Swiss Army knife – and, when I was a kid in the 1970s, I did have a small folding pocket knife in my pocket when I was at school (as did a majority of my male classmates).
For those of you who didn’t have pocket knives in school, did you ever find yourself in a situation where the lack of one was a major problem? I certainly don’t recall one.
(The closest I can remember was having a manicure set, of an emery board and nail clippers for hang nails, because sometimes I’d get paint or clay under my nails. That’s it)
I’m a good experiment in this. I normally have a tiny pocketknife on my keychain, and I carried it to school for ten years. But over Christmas break I went to Mexico, and I took the knife off my keychain when I flew, and I’ve not put it back on yet. So I no longer carry one at school.
…I miss it.
But Cheese Danish. Mmmmmmm.
If you’re looking for a good cheese danish, head on down to the Oakmont Bakery, dude.
I’d also like to know how being a Scout makes you immune from being irresponsible. My cousin, for example is an Eagle Scout. He’s a smart guy, he was a good kid, but he still did some really bone-headed things as a teenager. Just because you’re Boy/Girl Scout doesn’t always prevent a person from making the same dumbass mistakes that any other teenager would.
