Zero Tolerance Nonsense: 6-Yr-Old Suspended for Using His Finger ‘Like a Gun’

05 Mar, 2015 by Warner Todd Huston

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Here we go again with the idiocy of “zero tolerance” policies in our schools. This time a 6-year-old was suspended because he pointed his finger like it was a gun. His finger. And a six-year-old is now pegged as a violent criminal by his school.

We see this idiocy all the time, but it isn’t any evidence of “gun crime” in schools. It is evidence that schools that are supposed to be run by adults are instead run by ignoramuses who fall back on an absurdist policy in order to avoid having to act like adults and make case-by-case decisions about behavior in class and instead callously rely on an unworkable and illogical one-size-fits-all policy that makes no sense.

Now they are punishing a little kid who likely has no idea what he did “wrong” by pointing his finger like a gun.

A Colorado Springs first-grader was suspended from school after pointing his fingers at a classmate in the shape of a gun.

Six-year-old Elijah goes to Stratton Meadows Elementary School. On Monday, he pointed at a classmate in the shape of a gun and said, “You’re dead.”

According to his behavior report, an administrator spoke with him about what being dead means and about not confusing “make-believe” or things in games with reality. And he received a one-day suspension for threats against peers.

“I know they have zero tolerance, but more of a maybe no recess,” his dad, Austin Thurston said. “Going as far as a one-day suspension is a little extreme for a six-year-old in a first-grade class.”

A spokesperson for Harrison School District 2, which Stratton Meadows is a part of, couldn’t give specifics about the case, because it’s part of the student’s personal record. But she said school administrators feel they issued the appropriate disciplinary action.

Aren’t educators the ones running around saying that the Common Core testing standards are no good because all kids are different and all situations are unique? And yet these are the same people saying one-size-fits-all zero tolerance policies are good?