Pennsylvania girl, 5, suspended for threatening to shoot girl with pink toy gun that blows soapy bubbles
We see this kind of thing all the time but it never gets an easier to talk about. Since these schools have this "Zero-Tolerance" policy, you cannot even be a 5 year old and say the wrong thing. And this is what happened in this case where a 5 year old little kindergartener threatened another student at the bus stop with a Hello Kitty plastic gun that shoots bubbles. Someone from the school was there at the time and searched the girl's bag for the gun, but she did not have it on her. Let's just say for a second she actually DID have it on her. I am almost positive, and you can correct me if I am wrong, but no one has EVER been killed by being hit by a bubble. Again, if my claim is somehow not true then please let me know!
Initially, the school brought the girl into the office and interrogated her on her comments. They did not alert the parents but instead talked to the girl on her own and then handed down a ten day suspension for "terroristic threats". The mother of the young girl then came t the school to plead for her daughter to be allowed to come back, and the school decided that they would allow the girl to come back after a two-day suspension instead of a ten day suspension. The family has hired an attorney to get the young girl's record expunged, so hopefully the attorney will be able to do that.
This is what we in society call going WAY too far when it comes to trying to keep the schools safe. If the little girl would have told someone that she had a REAL gun and would shoot someone, that might be a little different but I doubt it would call for a suspension at 5 years old. The child needs to learn that those kind of threats are wrong, and at 5 she and others her age do not understand the events in Newtown or anywhere else. A child of that age may know what death is, but in that kind of situation there is no way they could wrap their heads around it to fully understand.
This is where a good educational system could step in and teach kids that pointing guns at other people is not good unless you are playing with toys, for example. I had a Nerf gun when I was younger and my friends all had them. We would shoot at each other and none of us ever got hurt. It is fine to play those games, but it is also needed that the parents and the schools teach these kids that REAL guns take people's lives and they should not be treated in the same respect as a toy gun. If parents and schools taught this from a young age I promise there would not be kids out there who do not know the difference between the two and go to pick up their parent's gun thinking it is a toy.
This could have been used as a learning experience, but instead the school decides to punish the young girl who did not even know she was doing something wrong. Not only that, the school puts her in a room and interrogates her like a common criminal, and when she goes back to class she is told by a teacher the police could be called on her. This is no way to handle a situation like this from the perspective of a school district, but they decided that the best course of action was to punish this girl without her even learning what she may have done wrong. Do you think the punishment is going to teach this 5 year old something? I highly doubt it!
We need to take a calm look at how we treat children and how we teach them. Like everything else that is dangerous in life, guns should be taught to children. Maybe not necessarily how to shoot them at such a young age, but what kind of affect they will have on them later in life and what not to do when you see your parent's gun or even a friends. This stuff has to be taught at home as well, but if the schools are a place they claim to be (a place to learn) then why not teach them that REAL guns are dangerous if you do not know what you are doing and that play guns are different? It seems to me even a lesson a young girl or boy could understand in a very short time period!
No comments:
Post a Comment