Students Banned From Bringing Pencils To School 426
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samzenpus
from the watch-how-you-play dept.
from the watch-how-you-play dept.
mernilio writes "According to UPI: 'A Massachusetts school district superintendent said a memo banning sixth graders from carrying pencils was written without district approval. North Brookfield School District interim Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy said Wendy Scott, one of two sixth-grade teachers at North Brookfield Elementary School, did not get approval from administrators before sending the memo to all sixth-grade parents, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported Thursday. The memo said students would no longer be allowed to bring writing implements to school. It said pencils would be provided for students in class and any students caught with pencils or pens after Nov. 15 would face disciplinary action for having materials 'to build weapons.'"
Re:Fear mongering 101 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Fear mongering 101 (Score:5, Interesting)
What I'm curious about though, is why the teacher felt this memo was necessary in the first place; TFA doesn't mention this.
When I was in grade school, we used to fling sharpened pencils like crossbow bolts, using several rubber bands for higher tension. It wasn't uncommon to draw blood from these toys... and there would be quite a firefight whenever the teacher turned his or her back toward the class to write on the board. So, I think that's why the summary mentions "materials to build weapons," but it's still a stupid idea to ban pencils.
Re:Fear mongering 101 (Score:4, Interesting)
If you take apart the cheap-ass Bic mechanical pencils, use a rubber band in a slit in the eraser and then wrapped to the pencil clip, you have yourself a pocket "gun". [instructables.com]
I'm betting the teacher was tired of that.
Re:Fear mongering 101 (Score:4, Interesting)
As Boortz has said, sending your children to a government school in the U.S. is tantamount to child abuse.
... and the public-educated pupils from American schools are the clever ones. Private schools in America appear to just exist to take money from parents, and store the children during the day.
A while ago I used to help out with an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) class - we had American exchange students. Students who had made their way to university from state schools in the US read and wrote at about the equivalent of a UK 14- to 15-year-old. Students from a private school background were essentially retarded. They managed to read at a UK high-school level with some encouragement, and struggled to write at that level.
Re:Fear mongering 101 (Score:3, Interesting)
No point in take the leg off a chair, just use the entire chair as a weapon.
Re:The pen[cil] is mightier than the sword! (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I am pretty sure that measure is to counter violence, but since when has "weapons control" laws ever resulted in decreased violence? [...] But does that stop murders and mayhem? Nope! It just making the killings more gruesome and painful.
You explicitly said that strict gun laws did not decrease the amount of violence found in Japan and that it did in fact make the murders committed there more gruesome.
Not to mention that declaring all non-perfect solutions to be of negligible effect is a fallacy in itself. We may be unable to completely stop murder but that doesn't mean that measures taken to reduce homicide rates (such as making firearms less available) are automatically pointless.
Re:You know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on the rest of your post, I don't think you are advocating this position (merely stating why someone would do this). Still, I'd suggest that anyone who agrees with this notion to read Harrison Bergeron [tnellen.com], where "equality of outcome" is the central theme. This is where we will eventually be led.
Re:Fear mongering 101 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The pen[cil] is mightier than the sword! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fear mongering 101 (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah- it was the 'racist system' that got her knocked up 9 times. ::roll eyes::
Re:Very hard to believe (Score:3, Interesting)
Like edawstwin above, I attended both public and private schools in the U.S. - in fact, three of each.
While there is truth to the assertion that some private schools are much better than others, this doesn't take into account how bad many government schools are. I attended one private school that is one of the best in the United States, and another which was the Baptist-run type referred to, with underqualified teachers. Despite this handicap, that Baptist school still performed better than the local government schools, at least up through 8th grade. They just didn't have funds for proper laboratory work, as they only charged - in 2010 dollars, about $2000/year. However, every single student at that school could read and do basic math, which by itself is an improvement over the government schools.
Perhaps the British author of the post several stages up is the victim of another phenomenon: namely, he doesn't see the many students from government schools who dropped out or never learned to read because they don't apply to universities in England. A private education is an indication that a family is interested in education, and so the children are more likely to attempt to avail themselves of educational opportunities, even when they are something of a stretch. In school districts where the residents are relatively wealthy the schools tend to be reasonably good, so these already-advantaged students are also more likely to attend the government schools, again skewing the results.
As one last aside, note that since 1970 real spending per pupil at government schools in the U.S. has more than doubled, with - so far - nothing to show for it. But then, as John Taylor Gatto has noted, government schools in the U.S. have not failed. In fact, they have fulfilled their mission perfectly. We should be aware, however, that their mission never included educating students.