What's wrong with this picture?
Heck, what's NOT wrong with it?
PENCIL sharpeners have been banned from a primary school after a pupil dismantled one and used the blade to slash another child's neck. The victim was attacked in the playground at Waterloo Primary School in Ashton under Lyne.
He was taken to Tameside Hospital where he had butterfly stitches placed on the wound. The attacker was suspended for two days and is now back in school.
A two-day suspension for deliberately striking near someone's jugular with a razor-sharp object? And the offender is allowed to return, while the sharp objects are not? You have got to be kidding me.
...the decision to allow the boy to return to school has angered parents. Some have signed a petition calling on the school to permanently expel the youngster. One parent, who did not wish to be named, said: "Are our children safe when we send them through those gates every morning? The lad purposely took the blade out of the sharpener. In my eyes that is a pre-meditated attack. My children know the difference between right and wrong. To suspend that boy for just two days is no punishment at all."
These British parents are being too polite, and too restrained. But British school administrators appear to be just as touchy-feely and sympathetic to crime as American ones:
Tracy Buckley, the school's head of governors, has written to all parents, saying the school understood the gravity of the incident and acted accordingly.
The letter states: "The school, like every other school, has a duty to promote 'inclusion' of all pupils. The emphasis of the (DfES) guidance is that a permanent exclusion is discouraged and to be considered as a last resort in very extreme circumstances. A fixed period exclusion was entirely appropriate for the circumstances."
Good to know that deliberately slashing a child's neck is not considered "extreme" in the UK. At this point, it's obvious that the banning of the pencil sharpeners is merely a desperate measure to regain some control over a school system in which kids who have the stomach flu will miss more classes than throat-slashers will.
Posted by kswygert at December 10, 2004 11:42 AM