10-year old Johnny Jones suspended for shooting imaginary arrow
How about these nut case zero-tolerance school officials be reduced to imaginary jobs?
We have highlighted here many times the almost insane “zero tolerance” policies at school wherein students are disciplined, suspended and expelled for biting a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun, bringing Quarter coin-sized gun keychain charms to school, and even pointing a pencil and saying “bang.”
Now another case.
A fifth grader is suspended and faces expulsion for shooting an imaginary bow and arrow at school mimicking The Hunger Games.
Megyn Kelly reports (video at bottom of post):
A fifth grader in Georgia [note: original report has since been corrected to reflect Pennsylvania] has been suspended for shooting an imaginary arrow at a classmate. The 10-year-old also faces possible expulsion.
The Rutherford Institute, which is defending Johnny Jones, says he was told he violated the school’s zero tolerance policy on weapons. They’re working to get the suspension reversed and lifted from his permanent record.
On Friday night’s The Kelly File, defense attorney Jonna Spilbor reacted to the ordeal. “Here’s how ridiculous it is. If we’re going to punish this poor kid for pretending to shoot a bow and arrow, let’s ticket his parents for parking their unicorn in a fire zone.”
The school is defending its decision:
Principal John Horton contacted Ms. Jones soon thereafter in order to inform her that Johnny’s behavior was a serious offense that could result in expulsion under the school’s weapons policy. Horton characterized Johnny’s transgression as “making a threat” to another student using a “replica or representation of a firearm” through the use of an imaginary bow and arrow.
According to the South Eastern School District’s Zero Tolerance policy for “Weapons, Ammunition and other Hazardous Items,” the district prohibits the possession of “weapons,” defined as including any “knife, cutting instrument, cutting tool, nunchaku, firearm, shotgun, rifle and any other tool, instrument or implement capable of inflicting serious bodily injury.” The Student Code further prohibits any “replica” or “look-alike” weapon, and requires that the school Principal immediately contact the appropriate police department, complete an incident report to file with the school Superintendent, and begin the process of mandatory expulsion immediately.
Little Johnny is being represented by The Rutherford Institute, which has written a letter on his behalf.
(Featured Image Source: Hunger Games Preview)
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I didn’t catch her name during the Kelly FOX broadcast, the lady on the far right in the photo above, but in response she said, paraphrased, “maybe I’ll get a fine from this school for parking my unicorn in a fire zone.”
Stories like this are coming out on a regular basis despite the furor and backlash from reasonable people everywhere. This suggests these overreaching disciplinary actions are part of a national plan in our public schools – criminalizing firearms, even to the extent of criminalizing thinking about firearms if you are a student. They must see it as a way to preempt students becoming interested in firearms in adulthood.
‘Orwellian’ used to be among the most commonly overused epithets. Not any more. They’re heeeee-re.
I think this is spot on.
It is of the highest priority to disarm the American people. No obstacle will be allowed to stand in the way, nor will regret at ruining lives of innocent people be allowed to hinder the effort.
Of course from the school’s point of view the fact that he used his mind to imagine the bow and arrow is what is truly dangerous.
Just picture the horror; this child might grow up to think independent thoughts!
Principal John Horton is an idiot. Bows and arrows may be weapons, but they are not “firearms.” As far as weapons go, even something as innocuous as a book bag could fall under their definition of “weapon,” since one could rather easily inflict “serious bodily injury” with the straps (think: garrote).
It’s a wonder these educrats don’t choke on their own stupidity.
I could kill very effectively with a cheap ball-point pen.
Or a rock.
If you have a child in MOST public schools, you are committing prima fascia child abuse. IMNHO.
I was thinking sharpened pencil but a ball point works, too. Even a chalk board eraser could be a weapon in the hands of someone intent on real physical violence. Without more facts though, couldn’t one also assume the student was simulating cupid’s love arrow? I could easily see an expression of love while the school sees a 10 year old violent criminal.
What’s happening isn’t because they are too stupid to know the differences between Glocks, compound bows, and book bags as weapons. There is a zero-tolerance anti-gun agenda behind this, coupled with a secondary agenda for – I don’t know what else to call it – thought control. Anything, anything at all, that so much as mimics or implies weapon usage is being penalized as if an actual weapon were present.
How much has America changed that it isn’t conspiracy theorist lunacy to think such things about our public school system?
As Browndog points out below, this is really centered on the whole idea of a war on masculine impulses and behavior.
Womyn HATE anything “manly”. It somehow has become associated with all that is retrograde and negative in human nature.
Of course, that would vanish in a heart-beat if the spit hit the fan, and the thin, artificial veneer of “civilization” went away.
And, given that these idiots come out of the “sewers of the academe”, they really are too stupid to even get how stupid they are.
Yup. That’s pretty much what Christina Hoff Somerset writes in “Men, It’s in Their Nature”.
http://www.americanenterprise.org/issues/articleID.17565/article_detail.asp
Christina Hoff Sommers also wrote an excellent book back in 2001 called “The War Against Boys”. I just noticed Amazon has released a kindle version this year. IMO, it’s worth the read.
It’s Pavlovian brainwashing;
Condition each successive generation to regard actual weapons and aggression as abnormal.
The act of pointing a finger is literally to be considered as dangerous as a pistol and must be punished.
Children are encouraged to develop their imaginations but only if they imagine peacefully.
In time it is hoped men will cluster like chickens and wet themselves at the sight of a real firearm.
In this way they may be lead about as required.
I tried searching the definition of a firearm within Georgia statutes, but it appears the State does not make that an easy task.
What I can say for certain is that bows are often legally defined as firearms, including in their neighboring state of Florida.
Not that that has any real bearing on this issue. While the policy does mention replica weapons it does not mention imaginary ones.
This is not merely bureaucrats gone wild, it is child abuse.
Glenn Reynolds likes to talk about tar and feathers, in this case I’d really do it.
I am guessing this guy would have had an immediate stroke if he had witnessed us playing “soldier” or “cowboys and indians” when we were in school.
Yea, it actually makes me wonder, since I have been training in Martial Arts for almost 30 years, when I teach my children how to defend themselves, would they throw them out of school (1) for their hands and feet being weapons?
(1) Note that I have no intention of sending any children of mine to the liberal septic tanks that are public schools, but the point remains the same.
The way to start fixing this is for the school board to publicly overrule Principal Horton and to tell him his contract will not be renewed next year.
If there are few published accounts of school boards punishing the bad behavior of teachers and administrators, other school boards would get the message and we wold have lot fewer incidents of this kind of idiocy.
Put him in front of an imaginary firing squad.
And give the so-called adults at that school and imaginary beating.
nah…the beating needs to be real.
at the ballot box with a sane school board
I shot them with my imaginary bow and arrow. No beating, imaginary or real, could knock any sense into them.
This is an ongoing war against boys-
The percentage of American children from 4 through 17 years of age who have ever been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) increased 42 percent from 2003 to 2011, according to a newly released study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study indicated that more than 20 percent of 11- and 14-year-old American boys had been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives, that boys were 125 percent more likely than girls to be diagnosed with the disorder, and that boys were 127 percent more likely than girls to be medicated for it.
The study also found that children in public health programs (Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) were 53 percent more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than children with private health insurance.
Wanna bet this young man adds to this statistic as a condition of his return to school?
It begins in preschool, where the ideal 4-year-old boy is a 5-year-old girl; then in Kindergarten, where the ideal 5-year-old boy is a 6-year-old girl, and on and on. If you’re a parent of a boy there is tremendous pressure to seek therapy and/or medication for your child–not only from school personnel but from other parents who somehow have all suddenly graduated from medical school and appoint themselves experts over other kids’ behavior. When the boys get to high school, they’re sick of being singled out, medicated, scolded. Some retreat into depression; some sell their ADD medicine and hang out with kids who do much harder drugs. No one seems to know how to raise a boy to become a man any more.
Imagine these kids’ opinion of the second amendment in 20-30 years.
The policy makers sure have.
I would think, but not knowing the law, that the parents should have some sort of a lawsuit against the school principle making this decision, as well as, all of the administrators up the chain of command. This is brainwashing to vunerable minds, and is so far out of “an American” experience that I can barely contain my disgust. This Country was not founded on zero policy yet we allow bureacrats this lattitude. Of interest, on dictionary dot com, the definition includes “an official who works by routine without exercising intelligent judgement”. That pretty much sums this up, except, if we, as a society allow it, doesn’t make us much better.
This school probably banned ‘creative writing’ class too. Just follow the rules, kids, and take your medicines… Bah!
Mom hired an attorney. And, the school district didn’t expect this.
I will leave it to your imaginations what the attorney, Jonna Spilbor, can claim for her client, ahead. Hm? When the principal, Horton, discovers the exposure, will he call in the insurance company to find out what the cap is on the school’s liability? Will he practice in front of a mirror, for the jury trial, ahead, where he demonstrates the seriousness of “shooting an imaginary arrow into the air.”
Or will the judge rule “no hand gestures allowed. Just the verbals.
Another in the endless line of Debollocking of American Boys. Balls—even tiny ones—are Evil and to be Verbotten.
Winning…? BAAAAD. Cowboys and Indians…? ZERO Tolerance. Testicles…? Concavities are the PC-Thought Police Aim.
Take a gasping gander at the ‘look’ of young American men: Anyone for sunken chests, spikey hair and skinny jeans?
These people were educated by the Androgyny Gender Theorists. They have turned their theories into (pseudo) science and law so that nowadays, it is not considered pathological to think you are a boy when you are a girl and vice versa. Next they will try to normalize pedophilia, incest and bestiality.
Listen, I agree with the principal in this case. Who knows how many imaginary friends might have been injured?
These people are too stupid to teach my children.
Robin Hood Robin Hood riding through the glen
Robin Hood Robin Hood with his band of men
Jeered by the bad
Loved by the good
Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood.
Well there goes that idea.
Just one more reason that 1) the federal government should have no role in public education at any level, and 2) the 19th Amendment was a very bad idea.
Any school administrator who could render such an opinion should be banned for life from ever getting within 1000 feet of any school. Kids can hide from guns and avoid drug dealers; idiot educators are their kidnappers, their wardens from whom there is no escape.
That would include pens, pencils, forks, scissors, umbrellas, most musical instruments, most tools, protractors, cans, rocks, baseballs, bats, glass bottles, and pretty much anything that can be thrown or used as a blunt instrument.
But it DOES NOT include imaginary bows and arrows, spears or guns.
Hardback Books (such as a volume of Encyclopedia Britanica, if they print those anymore), laptops and iPads are also possible lethal weapons. And don’t forget belts and toilet seats.
The totalitarians are turning the USA and our schools into prisons.
The online free dictionary definition of
rep·li·ca (rpl-k)
n.
1. A copy or reproduction of a work of art, especially one made by the original artist.
2. A copy or reproduction, especially one on a scale smaller than the original.
[Italian, from replicare, to repeat, from Late Latin replicre; see replicate.]
AND look-alike::
look-a·like also look·a·like (lk-lk)
n.
One that closely resembles another; a double.
Under the above definitions, my understanding of the school policy “…The Student Code further prohibits any “replica” or “look-alike” weapon…” I do not see inclusion of non physical items, such as gestures.
I am admonished and I agree that I should Report Child Abuse; this abuse is not only of Johnny Jones but of us all!!!
Time to start passing out imaginary paychecks.
Thirty one comments and nothing from DriveBy trying to tell us the kid really is guilty of making a threat with a firearm?
I know these points will be way to logical for a liberal mind, but here goes anyway;
“using a “replica or representation of a firearm” through the use of an imaginary bow and arrow.”
Bow and Arrow isn’t a “firearm”, by any definition.
“Principal John Horton contacted Ms. Jones soon thereafter in order to inform her that Johnny’s behavior was a serious offense that could result in expulsion under the school’s weapons policy.”
Translation: No fair you weren’t supposed to take this public, how dare you expose our insane idea’s to the general public. Since you decided to do this we are gonna make this as painful as possible for this family as a matter of childish revenge.
You all realize how many “staff” members it takes now to run an elementary school? Remember when your school used to have one teacher for each grade, there was an art and music teacher who made the rounds, one gym teacher, a principal, a secretary and a school nurse?
Today, elementary schools have principals, vice principals, school psychologists, several secretaries,math assistants, reading assistants,speech, social worker,phys. ed, lunchroom, playground aids, intructional aids,media specialists, media paraprofessional, special ed teachers, special ed paraprofessionals, and many elementary schools have a latch key program with it’s requisite staff.
In other words, it is a mini city, a kingdom onto itself complete with all of its rules and dictates mandated via a political process.
If I currently had school age children, they would either be home schooled or in a small private school of like mind. Public schools are simply progressive indoctrination centers.
[…] 10-year old Johnny Jones suspended for shooting imaginary arrow […]
Start paying them with imaginary paychecks.
If the bow and arrow were “imaginary”, what proof is there that the incident even happened? The boy cannot be forced to testify against himself (5th Amendment) and for a court to recognize as factual a description of something that doesn’t exist – “ludicrous” is far, far too mild a term.
This affair takes the level of control being exerted on school-children to new and extreme levels. It makes it possible for literally every motion and gesture of a student to be [mis-]interpreted as a threat of some kind. And worse yet, it goes on to exert “thought control”; “If you raise your hand over your head, I [the teacher] know that you are thinking about hitting someone, and you are therefore a danger.”
I would hope that the boy’s parents do NOT accept any kind of settlement offer from the school, and take the matter all the way through a trial. A settlement will probably include a stipulation that the school admits no guilt, and what needs to happen is not for the family to get money, but for the responsible parties to be held accountable and their guilt made public.
Two incidentals – what would a game of dodgeball be considered at this school, a riot? And, shouldn’t playing “rock, paper, scissors” be considered an assault – kids settling an argument with imaginary scissors (oh, the violence!) or an imaginary rock (bloody, vicious…)?
My daughter from 3rd to 5th grade was tormented by a boy who threatened to kill her, rape her, he stalked her, he would come to the house and demand to talk to her, he made her life at a very young age scary. We did report it to the school and the police. We file numbers of reports ( I was a regular at the police station). We even had 911 calls where you could here him threatening us and her. We talked to the parents and grandparents who he lived with, they would just say he gets that way when he doesn’t take his meds. No one could do anything to protect my daughter because it was a minor v a minor and get hadn’t fiscally harmed her. We had video of him watching the house, still nothing. The school did keep him 15 minutes longer after school so she could get home. The advise the school board and the police gave us was maybe we should consider moving. Well that wasn’t going to happen. Plus this boy’s parents were in law enforcement. So if I had the issue of a crush and a little boy kissing my daughter, that would be nothing. So if a real threat isn’t taken care of how can you discipline a make believe gesture. We played games as kids where we pretended to shoot each other, that is a kid thing. These administrators must of lived in a glass house and never did anything but look out. My daughter is now 21 and in college to be a teacher of all things, I wonder if that is a good thing.