Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Please tell me that the Principal of that school is now looking for employment elsewhere, in a much less challenging career.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It doesn't really matter. If pupils see each other being treated differently "before the law" at school, they quickly come to distrust arbitrary authority.

Which is a good thing, in my view.

And seeing moronic application of rules helps them develop respect for the law? If she'd had the knife in public and wasn't using it in a threatening manner I doubt anything would have happened to her as she had the knife for a perfectly lawful reason.

I think we all know the law is an ass and what people really want is justice, fairness and equity.

Sadly that is in short supply in this imperfect life.

Something equally stupid happened to my cousins daughter just recently. Her daughter is into... erm Im not sure what the style is called, but where she likes to dress up like a biker chick from the 50s? Anywho. She wore a pink bandanna to school to hold her hair up, and was told she HAD to take it off right now. She couldnt understand why and simply asked "OK, well what rule am I breaking for wearing this?" And so she was suspended and my cousin was told by the principal "Its because your daughter is showing gang colors"


fething.....ridiculous

Is there a 'denying my kid the right to an education' law suit thing going on in the US?

One hears stories of that being allegedly common in the UK, whenever a kid gets suspended over something. - Even if it's a serious thing.

 KingCracker wrote:
Something equally stupid happened to my cousins daughter just recently. Her daughter is into... erm Im not sure what the style is called, but where she likes to dress up like a biker chick from the 50s? Anywho. She wore a pink bandanna to school to hold her hair up, and was told she HAD to take it off right now. She couldnt understand why and simply asked "OK, well what rule am I breaking for wearing this?" And so she was suspended and my cousin was told by the principal "Its because your daughter is showing gang colors"


fething.....ridiculous

I remember when i wore a bandana around campus as a social experiment, never got stopped once, while i knew several that did.
But yeah, schools have to be careful when it comes to gangs in all seriousness.

Funny part is that teachers bring kitchen/butter knives to school all the time to have in the lunch room. I did it when teaching, saw other teachers do it...nobody cared. Ridiculous. Especially since most schools have plastic butter knives-those are more serated than their metal counterparts!

 KingCracker wrote:
Something equally stupid happened to my cousins daughter just recently. Her daughter is into... erm Im not sure what the style is called, but where she likes to dress up like a biker chick from the 50s? Anywho. She wore a pink bandanna to school to hold her hair up, and was told she HAD to take it off right now. She couldnt understand why and simply asked "OK, well what rule am I breaking for wearing this?" And so she was suspended and my cousin was told by the principal "Its because your daughter is showing gang colors"


fething.....ridiculous

This is actually a very real deal. My wife works at a Elementary school, and there were 1st graders in fething gangs, targeting other kids in rival gangs. So while it may seem excessive at the surface, it is a real problem.

And a pink bandana is what gang's colors?

And IF you can find a gang that uses a pink bandana as their colors, is there a chapter where this took place?

Big difference between 'you are representing the crips' and 'you have a generic pink bandana and that just may be gang related'. Administrators have the responsibility to know the difference and act accordingly. If they don't they need to be held accounatble.

Blah blah blah

Pink is a fairly common color used by gangs. Maybe you should march down to your local PD and talk to their gang unit and see if they are aware of every gang activity and their colors and symbols. After you realize that even the people who have no other job than to watch gangs have a hard time monitoring the activities of every gang and monitor which new gangs are showing up, then maybe you will realize that it would be impossible for a school official to track which gang are active in their district and what their colors are.

But it is easier to complain about a student being suspended for bringing a weapon to school despite the fact that you can actually really stab someone with a butter knife and pretend that pink could never possibly be a gang color and that a principal should know more about the gangs than the local PD.

 KingCracker wrote:
Something equally stupid happened to my cousins daughter just recently. Her daughter is into... erm Im not sure what the style is called, but where she likes to dress up like a biker chick from the 50s? Anywho. She wore a pink bandanna to school to hold her hair up, and was told she HAD to take it off right now. She couldnt understand why and simply asked "OK, well what rule am I breaking for wearing this?" And so she was suspended and my cousin was told by the principal "Its because your daughter is showing gang colors"


fething.....ridiculous

Its really not, back in the 90's a lot of schools in and near Chicago banned clothing bearing the Blackhawks indian head because it was being used as a gang sign, and territorial claim*, by the Vice Lords. The ban wasn't meant to stamp out gang activity, so much as it was meant to protect students from unknowingly putting themselves in the middle of a violent situation.




*Basically, anything marked by the indian head belonged to the vice lords, and given that the indian head is plastered all over the city and its suburbs...

 d-usa wrote:
Blah blah blah

Pink is a fairly common color used by gangs. Maybe you should march down to your local PD and talk to their gang unit and see if they are aware of every gang activity and their colors and symbols. After you realize that even the people who have no other job than to watch gangs have a hard time monitoring the activities of every gang and monitor which new gangs are showing up, then maybe you will realize that it would be impossible for a school official to track which gang are active in their district and what their colors are.

But it is easier to complain about a student being suspended for bringing a weapon to school despite the fact that you can actually really stab someone with a butter knife and pretend that pink could never possibly be a gang color and that a principal should know more about the gangs than the local PD.

Blah blah blah. Read what I wrote. It isn't impossible for the school to know what gangs are in their area. And yes, pink is used, but not very commonly, and not everywhere, hence my comment. If the Imperial Gangsters are not prevalent in that area, and the kid was wearing apink bandana for the fun of wearing a pink bandana, the administration was being stupid, and should be called on it. IF they actually have a problem with pink as a gang color in that district, a polite call to the parents explaining the real issue would have been a lot more appropriate than suspending the student. Again, I am arguing that Zero Tolerance Policies are generally very stupid and allow stupid and petty people to be stupid and petty. It takes away their responsibility to make decisions and have to think. It appalls me that this seems okay to people.

Kids can 'actually stab someone' with a pen, a pencil, a plastic spork from the chow hall, a protractor, a compass and several other implements found at schools. Suspending someone for possession of a butter knife being used to cut a piece of fruit in the chow hall is just stupid. Perhaps confiscating the knife could be justified, but suspending the kid? dumb. You may consider it good, I am toatally against it. So we are not going to agree.

Thanks for missing the point that cops don't even know what all gangs are active in an area, but expecting school officials to know more than cops.

Thanks for missing my point that suspending a kid for wearing a bandana with no other real justification is asinine.

Given the number of gangs in the US, should all schools adopt a drab tan uniform and suspend any kid wearing anything else? What color is not used by some gang somewhere?

If the school officials are having gang problems, identifying the gangs and their symbology would be important. But that is really not relevant to what happened. If they are not having problems, suspending a kid wearing a bandana of any color is stupid unless there is some valid reason. Even if they are having issues, as I stated, explaining the issue vice suspending the kid would be appropriate. Bandana = Gang Activity In All Cases is not a valid reason to suspend a kid in my mind. Allowing school administrations to suspend kids for using a butter knife to cut fruit at lunch or for wearing a bandana as a fashion accessory is dumb.

Again, you disagree and seem to think a school administration should be able to suspend kids for whatever reason they want as long as they have a CYA Zero Tolerance Policy to hide behind. I get that. I won't agree with it.

the point is, Bandanas are often part of gang attire. People wear them w/o knowing that so they assume it is alright. A ban on bandana's makes sense, i saw some people shot just for wearing a yellow bandana.
This is about safety, way more then it is about anything else.
Also, many schools have dresscodes sent home to kids, Mine explicitly says "No bandana's of anykind"

I am completely wrong. I have a wife working at an elementary school that has had a real gang problem and I clearly have no idea what I am talking about. I now agree that it is also dumb to suspend a student that brought a knife to a school when there is a rule not to bring knives. Clearly I am dumb...

What exactly was it that stopped the girl slicing them up at home before having to take a knife into school?

Relapse wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It doesn't really matter. If pupils see each other being treated differently "before the law" at school, they quickly come to distrust arbitrary authority.

Which is a good thing, in my view.

For me the ultimate demonstration of that was when I was 10 and a teacher named Hanscomb had another student summon me to his classroom. When I walked into the otherwise empty room, he grabbed me, threw me against a wall, then against a desk that he proceeded to slam me down into.
The crime? I had forgotten to put my name on a science test that I had scored a 95 on.
I contrasted that to his behavior with other students that had done the same thing where he just told them to remember to sign their name.
I guess maybe I just forgot to sign my name on a bad day for him.

Holy crap. How did this guy even get his job? He should've gotten into real trouble with the school for doing that. Attacking a 10 year old for any reason is just plain wrong on so many levels.

_Tim?

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
What exactly was it that stopped the girl slicing them up at home before having to take a knife into school?

Lots of fruit, for example apples, goes off quite quickly after cutting it.

What exactly makes a butter knife a dangerous weapon? A steel ruler is more dangerous.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
What exactly was it that stopped the girl slicing them up at home before having to take a knife into school?

Lots of fruit, for example apples, goes off quite quickly after cutting it.

What exactly makes a butter knife a dangerous weapon? A steel ruler is more dangerous.

Hell, a plastic one is more dangerous.

Shatterproof my arse. ¬.¬

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
What exactly was it that stopped the girl slicing them up at home before having to take a knife into school?

Lots of fruit, for example apples, goes off quite quickly after cutting it..

That's what airtight plastic tubs were made for though, and they're not exactly expensive stuff

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
What exactly was it that stopped the girl slicing them up at home before having to take a knife into school?

Lots of fruit, for example apples, goes off quite quickly after cutting it.

What exactly makes a butter knife a dangerous weapon? A steel ruler is more dangerous.

In the right hands, anything can be dangerous. While I understand why these rules exist, I also feel that ultimately, no amount of banning found-objects can stop violence in schools. My friend teaches high school in a poverty line charter school in Baton Rouge. One of his female students beat a male peer nearly to death in less than a minute with her combination lock. It happened so fast, he could barely register it. He restrained her (probably saving the other kid's life) and sent her off with the police. And this, really, is just an everyday event for him. So, while adding a growing list of things to the banned list might stem the tide a bit, it's only treating the symptoms, not the disease.
However, with that being said, I have no realistic suggestions on how the U.S. might go about treating the actual problems.

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
What exactly was it that stopped the girl slicing them up at home before having to take a knife into school?

Lots of fruit, for example apples, goes off quite quickly after cutting it.

What exactly makes a butter knife a dangerous weapon? A steel ruler is more dangerous.

Hell, a plastic one is more dangerous.

Shatterproof my arse. ¬.¬

I live in fear of wooden ones. No sister superior! I'll be good! Promise!

*shudder* I think Catholic school as a lad is what put me off religion.

Bah, man up!

Yes Sister Superior, I've been a very bad boy!

I see these threads a lot...I don't always chime in, as I get sick of it, but before I even start talking...

Until Friday I was a Head of Year in a Hackney school. In my year groups, I've had a kid who, when 12 years old, was convicted for manslaughter (it was a plea bargain) another kid had a sawn-off and ammo found under his bed, same kid had to flee London for several months 'cos his stash got stolen and his life was in danger, another was stabbed in the neck and nearly died, then brough a 4" blade into school, where it fell on the floor during a public exam... So I have more authority that pretty much anyone on this board regarding this particular subject...

Regarding bandanas... Outright ban. All colours, any time. For several reasons. It is ludicrous to claim that as a school staff, I have any way of knowing which colours are current with which gangs at which time. I knew more than most of my colleagues because most kids trusted me, even if they didn't like me, but I couldn't even identify every gang, let alone tell you their colours of territory, or what alliances are currently running. It is also not the case that every child will know, so allowing any children to wear bandanas put those children in danger. It also allows those wearing those colours deliberately to intimidate other children. Now, I also know enough to know that she did more than question it just once. She may have not outright refused to remove it, but you also reach a stage where you should not have to explain every single instruction every single time. I have lost count of the number of times a kid gets in trouble then outright lies in front of their parents when you tell the parents what really happened, and plenty of parents sit there saying "not my daughter." My best guess is that she was asked to remove it, repeatedly, and failed to. At that point, the suspension is not even for the bandana, but for refusal to follow instructions, which is another simple thing parents don't get. The number of kids I've heard say "I got suspended for moving seats" for example, when actually they got suspended for screaming at swearing at the teacher, after getting a detention for moving seats being the 11th or 12th thing they did wrong within the first five minutes of the lesson, then refusing to go to the shadow timetable, etc... and because their parents see it that way too, they never learn.

As for the knife, again, there is not much flexibility. Child X brings in a knife to butter her bread. Child Y brings in a similar knife to help extort cash. Prove Y is different to X. You have some leeway, but I've sat in exclusion appeals where exactly that scenario is used to make life difficult. An exclusion sounds extreme in this case, but if the same school is trying to permanently exclude a known bully who also had a similar knife, they may have decided not to jeopardise the other case, for example. Also agreed that the items found in school can be far more dangerous anyway, but they can be monitored and controlled more easily - count compasses in and out, count the scissors in and out. My school bans compasses, for example, as the boys used to stab each other in the leg with them for a laugh. Probably won't be fatal, but it is a major disruption to learning, and the girls' parents go bat-gak crazy when it starts happening to their daughters... Oh, and cutlery at my school? Until a year ago it was all plastic. I'd like to think we've moved on, but heaven forbid a kid goes crazy and does something silly. I already excluded one kid for wielding a pair of sharp scissors he brought from home to grab girls hair and cut them with it...

Zero tolerance is not actually as clear cut ridiculous as it often seems.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Bah, man up!

Yes Sister Superior, I've been a very bad boy!

I don't know what convents you've been too, but nuns in the United States are usually powerfully ugly creatures. Even 4th grade me knew that

Stockholm syndrome makes anybody hot.

Fifty said it better than I would have.

Zero tolerance generally exists because the parents have the attitude that discipline is for OTHER kids.

 deathholydeath wrote:

In the right hands, anything can be dangerous. While I understand why these rules exist, I also feel that ultimately, no amount of banning found-objects can stop violence in schools.

The aim is to reduce the consequences of violence (and make it more difficult to commit horrific violence), not to eliminate it.

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
What exactly was it that stopped the girl slicing them up at home before having to take a knife into school?

Lots of fruit, for example apples, goes off quite quickly after cutting it..

That's what airtight plastic tubs were made for though, and they're not exactly expensive stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RwOGYnoMaY

I wonder if they have plastic butter knives at the school. It's another stupid implementation of a stupid zero-tolerance policy.

If they're going to ban butter knives, they might as well just ban forks as well. Everybody gets a spoon.

If they don't want butter knives, then fine. They can just confiscate it, whatever. If the student was using the butter knife in a threatening manner, then a suspension could be warranted.

I don't think there's any way to really justify suspending a student for cutting fruit with a butter knife.