Punishment a bit too much?

[Sonic]

www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html?no_interstitial

What do you guys think?

[Peytral]

I'm almost tempted not to answer, it seems so rhetorical; but yes, the punishment was much too harsh. It's a f***ing 6 year old kid. What the hell did they think he would do, decapitate somebody with it?

[Sonic]

My thoughts exactly. And it would seem rhetorical to us, 'cause we have common sense. The kid's school board is apparently run by a bunch of f*cking idiots.

[Vile]

I realize that exposition for him taking like a steak knife to school, but a cub scout tool?

However rules are placed for a reason. If you bend one, you have to bend them all. It's simply just laying down the law and like most people, this family thinks the law's to tough. I say let them get tough, perhaps it will teach some people that rules are not to be broken, because god knows America needs to learn that.

[Sonic]

America also needs to learn to not suspend a 6 year old boy, he meant no harm at all! And now he could be suffering even greater repercussions from going 45 days to 'reform school,' where he'll be stuck with annoying little bastards that are 10 times the troublemaker is. I say, show some common sense, and show some leniency to this poor kid. If you were the excited 6 year old who brought his little cub scout tool to show his enthusiasm, and got suspended for it, would you really want them to uphold that rule and get sent to the bootcamp version of school? I sure wouldn't. He's 6. He just didn't think. Kids tend to not think a lot.

[Tony]

I think it was a bit much, yes. While those rules are there for a reason, schools tend to classify way too many things as a "weapon". I remember having a teacher in middle school that said the weapons policy was a bit extreme, stating that many things that were considered weapons were next to harmless.

[swimstud600]

School officials need to be able to use more discretion, in more minor cases I'd say suspend him for 3-5 days and make sure he knows to be more careful about what he brings to school, try to avoid more accidents.

Now when I was in school, one of the first things they taught us in Cub Scouts when we learned knife safety was that just in case we ever brought a knife to school in our back pocket to raise our hands, let the teacher know what was going on and slowly take our the knife in the principal's office, let him keep it till the end of the day and our parents could come take it. So either his parents and scout masters neglected to mention that or I'm just giving one of those back in my day speeches, I dunno.

But yeah, it was too much. Gotta take these seriously but you can't get excessive with your punishments.

[Professor Fann]

Sounds a bit too much.

He's a 6 year old who can absorb anything parents or elders tell them, since he's so enthusiastic about school, and he was better off with a new lesson from a warning they could have given him - instead of the suspension.

Education of right and wrong of deeds and motives are clearly insufficiently taught, or not taught at all.

[Sonic]

Good news, they realized their stupidity.
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091014/ap_on_re_us/us_zero_tolerance_boy