Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Stupid Educator News: Dangerous Christmas Sweater Club

From WUSA9.com: They call themselves the "Christmas Sweater Club" because they wear the craziest ones they can find. They also sing Christmas songs at school and try their best to spread Christmas cheer.
Now all 10 of them are in trouble because of what they did at their school.
"They said, 'maliciously maim students with the intent to injure.' And I don't think any of us here intentionally meant to injure anyone, or did," said Zakk Rhine, a junior at Battlefield High School.
The boys say they were just tossing small two-inch candy canes to fellow students as they entered school. The ones in plastic wrap that are so small they often break apart.
Skylar Torbett, also a junior, said administrators told him, "They said the candy canes are weapons because you can sharpen them with your mouth and stab people with them." He said neither he nor any of their friend did that.
Next thing they knew, they were all being punished with detention and at least two hours of cleaning. Their disciplinary notices say nothing about malicious wounding but about littering and creating a disturbance.
http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=126671&catid=188
Apparently, this school must not have any pencils or pens because pencils can be sharpened to create to create a weapon and pens are already to go as weapons once they are taken out of the box or bag they are in.
I can understand if this was juvenile jail school or mental health hospital where candy cane shanks can be usefully with the gangs, but this is a high school, named oddly enough, Battlefield High School, a name that highly suggests violence. But I guess the real reason is that the Candy Cane gang is being punished is because the Candy Cane gang believed in Christmas and in a round about way, the gang told other students about the real meaning of Christmas. You know, Santa Claus, Christmas trees and outside caroling.
As a teacher, I am embarrassed when I hear stories like this. Some teachers and administrators just take incidents like this too seriously or literally or they they think they are so darn important that need to take actions against the Candy Cane gang while ignoring the truly horrible gangs that engage in violence.
So, I hope that the Candy Cane Gang fights this in court. After all, the Candy Cane gang someday could be just as dangerous as the Bloods and the Crips



h/t: Opinion Journal, Best of the Web

2 comments:

  1. There is no evidence that they were disciplined for "weapons" -- they were disciplined for littering and creating a disturbance. If students at your school pelted fellow students with plastic-wrapped gumballs as they tried to enter the school at any time of year, would the teachers and principal turn a blind eye? These students gave the media a sob story that they knew would get them sympathy, like that obviously-drunk woman in Florida who claimed her local school board banned wearing red and green to school in December. It was completely untrue, but the local news team televised the interview without fact-checking, and Fox News picked it up so Gretchen Carlson could act outraged about the anti-Christmas discrimination.

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  2. stfu- where did you hear that people were being pelted with candy canes... These guys cleaned up the trash after they were told to and then they had to go to the office for hours on Tuesday to be yelled at. Anyway you lose because the media did pick it up, and it went from virginia to the east coast now its in las vegas retarted jill

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