TODAY IN OUT-OF-PROPORTION SCHOOL PUNISHMENT

1. An Ohio first-grader was given a three-day suspension last week after he pretended to shoot a fellow student with a bow and arrow. The first-grader was playing outside during recess at Our Lady of Lourdes in Cincinnati last Thursday when a teacher noticed the act and told the principal, who then called the boy into his office. Matthew and Martha Miele say their 6-year-old son was just imitating a Power Ranger. “The punishment is so severe in this it’s hard as a parent to try to make this a teachable moment for our kid so we can move forward in a healthy manner,” Matthew Miele said. Principal Joe Crachiolo said in a letter to the parents, “I have no tolerance for any real, pretend or imitated violence. The punishment is an out of school suspension.”
* He also has no tolerance for any real, pretend or imitated common sense.
* There are TONS of teachable moments here:
A. Schools overcompensate in reaction to being powerless to stop any REAL crazy kids who want to harm students.
B. They’re also trying to avoid any possible chance of being sued later for “not noticing a child developing troubling tendencies.”
C. We’re all participating in a massive the-emperor-has-no-clothes exercise here, and you’ve got to play along. While school is in session, we pretend as if we don’t live in a culture that glorifies and promotes violence, even to kids. We pretend as if massive amounts of popular media doesn’t involve weapons, shooting, killing, blowing things up. (Enjoy the new James Bond movie, everyone!) You’re not allowed to even acknowledge these things exist, say, by chewing your PopTart into the shape of a gun. Then, when the bell rings at the end of the school day, you go back to the real world.

2. An Oviedo, Florida, middle school girl was reportedly given detention after she gave her friends a hug before the bell rang for classes to begin for the day. The Jackson Heights Middle School eight-grader said the hug lasted “literally for a second.” The school bans any kind of hugging. The district said detentions are only given out for repeated offenses. Kathy Fishbough, the girl’s mother, said her daughter was given a warning after previously hugging the same boy, adding “If administration can’t tell the difference between a friendly, ‘How are you doing?’ hug and an inappropriate hug, then I think we have a big problem.”
* Sorry, but every American with a child in school knows we have a big problem.
* If only she had a Muslim-sounding name and had built a dangerous-looking alarm clock. She’d be going to the White House!
* I sort of understand the hugging-contact thing. Officials have been very jumpy since the invention of twerking.
* I bet we’d be more forgiving of these ridiculous suspensions, if we saw more of the ridiculous lawsuits that also roll in.
* What am I saying? The planet is falling into a politically correct death spiral.
* And how come just the girl gets punished for the hug? Looks like we’ve got some sexism going on here too.