7-year-old suspended over stick-figure drawing

[IDemo]

Complaint about image depicting 'water pistol' leads to disciplinary action

Updated: 10:01 p.m. MT Oct 20, 2007

DENNIS TOWNSHIP, N.J. - A New Jersey second-grader's drawing of a stick figure shooting a gun has earned him a one-day school suspension.

Seven-year-old Kyle Walker's mom told an The Press newspaper of Atlantic City that her son was suspended for violating the district's zero-tolerance policy on guns. She said her son told her he'd drawn a water pistol.

Kyle gave the picture to another child on the school bus, and that child's parents complained about it to school officials.

The case is not the first in New Jersey in which students were suspended for depictions of weapons.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21397455/

-- You just can't be too careful in dealing with these young Al Qaeda wannabe's.

[spanone]

1. rendition for that little bastard

:sarcasm:

[saltpoint]

2. Thank Jesus the authorities swooped down on this vicious little monster.

[burythehatchet]

3. "Don't taze me bro!!"

[toddaa]

4. My daughter likes to draw pictures of amputations and beheadings

Is this something I should be concerned about?

[saltpoint]

23. Not as long as they're Republicans.

[shadowknows69]

25. IMO, yeah maybe

depending on her age. Not saying she's on her way to becoming a serial killer or anything but other problems can manifest themselves like this. Just two cents from a lifetime mental case if you want it.

[The Inquisitive]

5. zero tolerance policies at their finest

ugh.

[cloudbase]

27. But, but

every child is special and an individual!!!!!

Fucking administrators and school board members.

[proud2BlibKansan]

47. And the state legislative bodies that pass laws requiring suspension for this?

They are not to be blamed. But yes, let's blame the schools for following the law. Yes, that makes sense! :sarcasm:

[cloudbase]

48. Out here, each district gets to set their own policies.

That "independent" in the "independent school district" still means something.

[proud2BlibKansan]

49. So the TX state legislature can't pass a law addressing school violence?

Don't kid yourself. We thought we were independent too.

[cloudbase]

50. Of course they can.

They're generally better at imposing unfunded mandates on the districts, though. Fortunately, they only meet biennially, or the destruction would be near absolute. My big beef with my school district (and I say this as having attended 50+ board meetings and having run for the board) is that there is plenty of teachers/admins/board members saying how special each child is, then seeing the board (at the behest of the administration) adopt one size fits all policies.

[valerief]

6. People are retarded (no reflection on or offense to mentally disabled people).

Those supposedly mentally capable parents who complained are uber-retards. What wastes of oxygen.

(If you have a problem with the word retard, I'll call them morons. No one ever complains about the use of the word moron, even though, well, you know. Means the same thing.)

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. I want to promote a new mnemonic here: NEI

Not
Enough
Information


Once again, we have a 'bad school' story where the parent's version of events is all we are hearing. And I would hope DUers are smart enough to want ALL the facts, not just those promoted by one side.

[valerief]

8. So you're saying the article might be incorrect in saying the kid was

suspended for the drawing and was suspended for something else?

[Elspeth]

10. It's possible, but schools are getting notoriously litigation-phobic.

It's coming to universities, too, in the wake of VA Tech.

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. No I am saying we only have the parent's version of events

There are many unanswered questions:

1. Did this child also threaten the child he gave the drawing to?

2. Does this child have a history of making threats?

3. Has this child done this before and has the parent been advised this is against school rules?

4. What is the state law regarding these kinds of drawings? That is what drives school policies. And many states adopted draconian laws regarding school violence and threats following Columbine. Often, school administrators have no choice but to suspend for incidents like this or they are breaking the law themselves.

N E I

[valerief]

33. So your answer is yes, not no, to my question. Thanks.

[proud2BlibKansan]

44. My answer is that we don't have enough information to draw any conclusions

N E I

[JitterbugPerfume]

35. exactly

we have no idea of this particular childs history.

[L1A1Rocker]

9. another example

of lawenforcment been turned into thought police.

[seabeyond]

11. my sons love to draw battle and other things. at 7 he was drawing

warships, cannons, snipers. whole stories in the drawing. he is so precise in drawings. they are not my favorite drawings, but i never told him not to draw cause he would focus and put so much time into it. last year in the 6th grade he did a project that had a whole story, and there were guns. i looked at it and said, no no no... no more drawing pictures with guns in them at school. you will get kicked out

it was half in jest, and half with concern that he would be pinned with something

and sure enough

*for a whole other thread.... this was my part in using common sense. it seems common sense has been given a bad wrap on this board and not worthy of use. seems to work for me.

[IDemo]

16. I drew a veritable fleet of jet fighters in grade school

Guess they'd be fitting me for a small orange jumpsuit nowadays,,:rofl:

[seabeyond]

19. ridiculous huh. told kids other day, no more chalking their sidewalks.

now this one was really in sarcastic jest in middle of store for lots others to hear me. told them a little girl got in trouble by police for drawing on sidewalk.... bad bad little girl. we all rolled our eyes.

[gollygee]

12. Maybe a stick figure with a taser would have been a better choice

:shrug:

[IDemo]

17. This one should do

[TahitiNut]

13. More than half the kids I went to school with would've been suspended

... under such nonsense policies such as this. Including me. In grade school from 1948 to 1961, I couldn't begin to count the reams of paper covered with drawings of guns, tanks, bombers, atomic bombs, and other images of war - both hot and cold. The imagery of the world of violence we were being prepared to face even crept into the various school publications of poetry and student literature assembled at various times by those who taught us to be literate.

Where are they getting grade school teachers from these days? Some Disneyland discard warehouse?

[ixion]

18. exactly... it was a very common pasttime back then and into the 80's

etc...

[proud2BlibKansan]

21. Was there a state law prohibiting these kinds of drawings back then?

That is the reason many schools now have strict anti-violence rules. The state says they have to.

[saltpoint]

14. If this kid drew a picture of Abu Ghraib with former Attorney General Gonzales'

image as a backdrop, would that have been a violation of the zero-tolerance policy of school violence, or was it the specific image of a gun?

Does that school system order textbooks with Davy Crockett and civil war soldiers etc depicted? I'm pretty sure those historical figures had guns.

[rAVES]

15. Isnt justice a beautiful thing?

[backscatter712]

22. I would have been given a life sentence...

I not only drew lots of guns, jets, & such as a kid, I drew blood and gore. My art could have been compared with badly drawn Happy Tree Friends animation.

Of course, back then the teachers just blew it off, as they should.

BTW, my favorite Happy Tree Friend is Flippy the war vet! :evilgrin:

[Froward69]

24. hopefully his parent(s) isnt a repube

he then would be medicated. only to act out the "Real thing" in highschool.

[Catshrink]

26. I had a student draw me getting machine gunned

blood all over the place. I was pretty sure he was joking but nonetheless, I referred it to the admins and social worker to let him know that wasn't funny.

This incident with a squirt gun seems benign. My question is: Where's the line? It's a hard call.

[proud2BlibKansan]

45. I had a student draw a picture of me with my arms and legs cut off

Yes, he was suspended because he also wrote at the bottom: 'I want to do this to my teacher.'

[artfan]

28. kids draw weapons

it is stupid to think otherwise when my older boys were that age bloody monsters and guns were the only thing they drew.

[shadowknows69]

29. I use to draw tanks and planes

had every plastic soldier known to man. probably a little influence from living a mile from Fort Drum as a child.

[izquierdista]

30. The proper enforcement of "no-tolerance"

The subject professing a policy of "no-tolerance" will be asked if they are comfortable and if their undershorts are loose-fitting. Upon a finding that tolerance exists between their privates and their undershorts, two burly security guards will grasp the back of the subject's undershorts and pull up with great force, eliminating any tolerance that might have existed.

[krispos42]

42. *snort* LOL

Good'un!

[JackRiddler]

31. SICK!

If only he'd included a flag and said the stick-figure was a Marine, it would have been fine.

[knitter4democracy]

32. Oh heck. It's hunting season almost up here. Kids have drawn worse.

I had a student get mad at me in class and draw a picture of him killing me in several ways with red pen all over the paper as blood. I told him he needed to work on his artistic skills and kept going. Nothing came of it (I was a field student there only once a week), and if I had felt he'd planned anything, I would've reported it.

People are overreacting to so much these days. Then they let the real problem kids slip through the cracks. There has to be a better way.

[seabeyond]

37. People are overreacting to so much these days..SOOOOO much, yes n/t

[Retired AF Dem]

34. Just goes to show you

not an ounce of common sense left in this fucked up country. And yes I'm laying blame to both sides of the aisle.

[seabeyond]

39. not an ounce of common sense ... both sides of the aisle

i couldnt agree with you more.

no tolerance is non thinking

[nonconformist]

36. My son (6 yrs old, 1st grade at the time) was almost suspended for

jokingly (both kids were laughing) telling a friend "I'm gonna kill you!"

His teacher called me all breathless and hyper, and sent my son to the principal's office. Fortunately, the principal had a bit of common sense.

[Cha]

38. And YET..

we still have the Fucking bushits in power.

[ContraBass Black]

40. According to an article in another thread,

The picture included the labels "me" over the shooter and a schoolmate's name over the target. I think that would warrant investigation, though not necessarily suspension.

[Swamp Rat]

41. When I was 7 I drew stick figures holding guns EVERY DAY.

In fact, I drew pictures in class like that every day up until middle school.

[krispos42]

43. I wonder if this is actually contributing to school shootings.

I mean, aside from perhaps a swastika, no other single, simple drawing that I can think of can cause such a fearful overreaction by parents and teachers.

And when kids see that parents and teachers have an apparent, unreasoning, and deep fear of guns... maybe that's why get sickly fascinated by them.

The gun stops being a tool for hunting or sport or self-defence, a finely-crafted mechanical device that takes skill and responsibility to use, a device that demands respect and care...

...and becomes some sort of evil talisman to scare and terrify and humilate those that have wronged.

[Trillo]

46. That kid should now be exempt from the "compulsory" element

of education. If he or she WANTS to go back to school for more punishment, then fine, that's then a matter of choice.

Too much mind-manipulation can occur when expulsion (suspension is less severe, admittedly) is used and the child is not exempted from the overriding compulsory education legal element. If a school child breaks the law, let an ethical prosecutor handle it: I rather doubt any prosecutor would prosecute a child who drew a stick figure holding a gun, given the First Amendment.

My point is that if school is, legally speaking, compulsory, then educators shouldn't be exempt from that legal requirement of compulsion with respect toward childs' attendance, either temporarily or permanently.

[Connie_Corleone]

51. Kids can't be kids these days. What a shame. eom

[varkam]

52. Tase him!!1!

[MilesColtrane]

53. Better start having kids index fingers removed too.

They tend to point them and make BANG! POW! PTCH-UUU!! sounds at each other.

[aikoaiko]

54. Can anyone find the text of the "no tolerance" law in nj or other states.

:shrug: