Punishing Little Boys For Being Little Boys

Yesterday Breitbart reported on a court case in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, located near Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. The case was an appeal of a case involving a second grade boy who was suspended from school in March 2013 after chewing his pastry into the shape of a gun and “[pretending] to fire it.” The boy’s father took the case to court with the hope that the suspension would be reversed and removed from the child’s school record.

The article reports:

But WJZ 13 reports that an Anne Arundel County circuit judge upheld the suspension, ruling that Joshua’s actions were “disruptive.”

Anne Arundel County Schools reacted to the ruling by releasing a statement which said, “We have believed from the outset that the actions of the school staff were not only appropriate and consistent, but in the best interests of all students.”

Welch family attorney Robin Ficker lamented the ruling and pointed out there was “no violence, no real weapon, no ammunition.” But the suspension will now “be on [Joshua’s] record in school… every time he goes into a new grade.”

I believe our educators have lost their collective minds. I wonder if he would have been suspended had he just pointed his index finger and pretended it was a gun. If you combine the fact that this incident will follow the child through school with the data mining that is part of Common Core, you realize that the report of this action will also follow the child into the workplace–with or without the details. So we have a second grader branded for life as a troublemaker because he acted like a little boy. That is child abuse.