6 Year Old Faces Reform School for Bringing Cub Scout Fork/Spoon/Knife to School | Hacker News Reader

Knife to School

nytimes.com

16 pointsmhb13 comments

A zero-tolerance policy on weapons will never prevent a single school shooting or other instance of serious violence. Never. Not even once. A shooter doesn't think "oh, I shouldn't shoot up my school because I will get expelled for it." A kid doesn't think "oh no, I'm had better not stab that rival gang member because someone might find my knife."

They completely fail to protect anybody. So why do these policies exist? There must be some ulterior motive to them.

Certain crimes of passion don't occur, or don't cause as much damage when no weapons are readily accessible.

Just because you say so doesn't make it true. Not all crimes with weapons are premeditated a day in advance. If someone brings a knife to school every day, they'll almost definitely have that knife available when a fight arises, whereas if they don't habitually bring a knife, they may not.

Also, I suspect that such zero-tolerance policies are popular among the majority of parents, to whom the other kid is generally the frightening one, and whose own wouldn't hurt a fly.

I accidentally brought a pocket knife to school one day, I saw it in my bag and remembered a teacher once telling us if something like this happened just give the knife to a teacher, explain the situation and everything would be fine. I thought about doing that, thought some more, zipped my bag up and didn't say a word. One of the Best Decisions of My Life. Later a younger student, 2nd grade I believe, was expelled for voluntarily handing over a butter knife to a teacher. Certainly a powerful lesson to anyone paying attention. Maybe not the lesson the school board thinks it's sending though.

It's sad when zero-tolerance equates to zero-common-sense.

What a shame - the 6 year old seems to have an understanding of the difference between a right action and a right law, which is amazing in a child of his age - "it seems the law is what is wrong, not me." This is such a contrast to the idiot policymakers that can't make the same distinction.

And of course, this child, whose enthusiasm for learning and life experiences got him into this situation, is being punished for them. Zero tolerance and zero common sense, as said by others.

Here in Taiwan, all public school students his age have utility knives at school and many regularly carry them in their pencil cases.

Serious violence here is extremely rare by western standards.

To be fair, serious violence in most American schools is rare, too. There's a study linked from the article commissioned by the US Department of Justice: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/iscs08.htm

One telling statistic that it provides is that during the '05-'06 school year, there was an average of one "serious violent crime" experienced per 1000 public school students (defined as "rape or attempted rape, sexual battery other than rape, physical attack or fight with a weapon, threat of physical attack with a weapon, and robbery with or without a weapon." -- and you can bet that "threat of physical attack" and "physical attack or fight" is fairly loosely defined.)

1 in 1000 per year is satisfactory, if you ask me. I don't think you can do much better than that among the population as a whole without sacrificing a ton more privacy and freedom.

Regardless of how loosely you feel the other statistics are defined, homicide rates don't leave much wiggle room. And homicide rates are many times higher in the west, particularly in the US.

>1 in 1000 per year is satisfactory, if you ask me. I don't think you can do much better than that among the population as a whole without sacrificing a ton more privacy and freedom.

What leads you to that conclusion? From the sound of this article, things are quite a bit more restrictive there. Kicking children out of their normal schools for nothing more than an honest mistake which hurt nobody isn't exactly the most forgiving system.

The nanny state in action. What a waste of time and resources.

It's even more crazy when something like that is a local policy... Try buying a large bread knife when you look <20 in UK -- maybe that's why noodles are so popular for students. Afaik noone forces that rule on the shops around here.

I remember good old times when we were required to bring large scissors and could use a wallpaper knife on some practical lessons in the primary school. Unfortunately that's almost terrorism lesson by today's standards. At least I know I'll have to teach my kids to use those tools at home, so they can create/fix basic stuff without asking for a specialist...

My son once brought a butter knife to school to spread peanut butter on some bread for lunch. They made a prtty big deal out of it, but no one was arrested.

This isn't suprising when teachers are required to ignore "teaching moments".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com