Draw Your Gun at School?
 
 

In order to appear "tough on juvenile crime and violence", many schools have adopted "zero tolerance" policies regarding weapons on campus. While these rules are intended to keep kids from bringing knives and guns to school, they've also been called upon to punish children who show up to class with a variety of toys — such as squirt guns or model guns — which school administrators find objectionable. Some schools have even punished students who create drawings of guns or write stories involving firearms or hunting, but a school in Louisiana has now gone one step further. According to a news report, a third-grader in that state was recently suspended for drawing a soldier.

The report states that the child drew a soldier "holding a knife and a canteen" as part of a class project. He also mapped a diagram of an imaginary fort, listing its inventory as "guns, knives and first-aid kits".

In recognition of this child's imaginary and artistic talents, school administrators gave him a suspension from school. According to the news report, the principal said that his school "can't tolerate anything that has to do with guns or knives". Which left the rest of the civilized world asking the question: Are you kidding?

But it soon became apparent that this was no joke. So, in the name of public safety, as well as political correctness, this principal claims his school has eliminated anything — anything — in his school having to do with knives or guns.
  

Consider, then, the outstanding education those children must be receiving without any exposure to anything having to do with guns or knives. How about the Domestic Arts section? (That's what used to be called Home Economics, for those of you not up-to-speed on politically correct class titles.) Once upon a time, children would have been taught a variety of seemingly useful and practical homemaking fundamentals, including the culinary arts. Fortunately, without exposure to anything having to do with knives, they can now sit around and stare at various edible items — bread, meat, fruit — without any means of cutting these things up and turning them into tasty meals. What a benefit this school policy is for them.
  

How about the Science department? Some of the most basic principles of chemistry and physics can be can be demonstrated by, and, in fact, were developed for use in early firearms. How beneficial that the kids won't have to learn such gun-related information.

The Mathematics department, too, will be in for some changes. Many advanced formulae and calculations were derived from the study of parabolic motion — which was brought about by the need for more accurate gunnery. The world will certainly be a better place when students are limited to the study of simple arithmetic instead of these complex, gun-related topics, won't it?

In the English Literature department, children's education will be enhanced by the elimination of such gun-related works as War and Peace, All Quiet on the Western Front, Last of the Mohicans, Catch-22, and a variety of other books involving guns and warfare. The Visual Arts, too, will be drastically altered as educators purge this department of every mention of paintings or sculptures involving swords, guns and other weapons — which, of course, is darned near every work of art ever created.
  

And when the school has freed its students from every book, drawing and subject having to do with guns or knives, will the children be better educated? Or will they simply learn that in a world where anti-gun political agendas dominate the school system, real education must be abandoned in favor of simple mental programming?

The early years of a child's education is a time of great discovery. To stifle young minds in order to advance a political agenda goes against every principle the American school system should stand for. Expelling a child for a drawing doesn't make a more enlightened, more advanced or even a more safe society, it only teaches children to be ashamed of their culture, their heritage and their thoughts. And that's not what they should be learning in school.

© 2001 Scott Farrell