Let’s call it what it is. It’s a knife. It is not, as has been widely reported, a “camping utensil.” Sure, it has a fork and spoon, because that’s what’s connected to the knife. It’s like the beloved Swiss Army Knife, It may even have a toothpick and scissors for all I know. But it is, at its heart, a knife. Just ask anybody who gets stabbed with it.
And so what?
Zachary Christie is only 6 years old, and he’s got a knife. He was so excited about his new knife, part of his paraphernalia of membership in the paramilitary organization, Cub Scouts, that he wanted to show it off. The Christina School District had a problem with this. Do you blame them? Does the fact that the knife happens to come with a fork and spoon make the knife less of a knife? If your kid came home and told you that they want a really cool knife like Zach’s, would you be on the phone to the principal in about 12 seconds? I would.
The New York Times has an editorial about this today, and they too refuse to call it what it is.
Consider the case of Zachary Christie, the 6-year-old Cub Scout from Newark, Del., who has been ordered to spend 45 days in a disciplinary school after bringing his nifty camping utensil to school to use to eat his lunch. The classic, foldable tool contains a fork and a spoon — and also a small knife, which violates the zero-tolerance weapons policy issued by the Christina public school system, Delaware’s largest.
“Nifty camping utensil?” Have you ever read a story about a stabbing committed with a nifty camping utensil? And notice how it’s just a “small knife,” as in the perfect length to accidentally pierce the heart of a 6 year old. By playing word games, the Times trivializes two significant issues.
Problems abound with the telling of this story, as there is no question that Zachary’s mother should never have allowed him to bring a knife to school. Never. It’s stupid, It’s dangerous and it should be against the rules. I can see cute little Zach whipping the blade around a bit to show it off to his friends, and somebody getting accidentally cut. It’s just not much of stretch. In fact, I wonder whether a 6 year old is ready for a camping knife at all. I waited until 10 to give mine his first Swiss Army knife. The Buck knife came at 12.
The trivialization of what was wrong with Zachary’s, and his mother’s, choice undermines the real culprit in this story. No, it’s not the school district per se, and their ridiculous punishment of 45 days in a disciplinary school. It’s rather curious that they have disciplinary schools for 6 year olds. Are these just for the really tough 6 year olds?
The problem here is our old buddy, zero tolerance policies. What’s astounding is how many people absolutely love zero tolerance in the abstract, and hate it in actual application. The same people who insist that by removing the arbitrariness of designing solutions based upon the specifics of the situation, by making intractable the certainty of harsh punishment, we can fix all problems, are the same people who demand to know what happened to common sense.
Which is it people? You demand mandatory minimums, three strikes, all the simplistic solutions that seem to be the silver bullet for society’s problems, and then can’t believe that anybody actually follows through with them.
Problems abound with the telling of this story, as there is no question that Zachary’s mother should never have allowed him to bring a knife to school. Never. It’s stupid, It’s dangerous and it should be against the rules. I can see cute little Zach whipping the blade around a bit to show it off to his friends, and somebody getting accidentally cut. It’s just not much of stretch. In fact, I wonder whether a 6 year old is ready for a camping knife at all. I waited until 10 to give mine his first Swiss Army knife. The Buck knife came at 12.
The trivialization of what was wrong with Zachary’s, and his mother’s, choice undermines the real culprit in this story. No, it’s not the school district per se, and their ridiculous punishment of 45 days in a disciplinary school. It’s rather curious that they have disciplinary schools for 6 year olds. Are these just for the really tough 6 year olds?
The problem here is our old buddy, zero tolerance policies. What’s astounding is how many people absolutely love zero tolerance in the abstract, and hate it in actual application. The same people who insist that by removing the arbitrariness of designing solutions based upon the specifics of the situation, by making intractable the certainty of harsh punishment, we can fix all problems, are the same people who demand to know what happened to common sense.
Which is it people? You demand mandatory minimums, three strikes, all the simplistic solutions that seem to be the silver bullet for society’s problems, and then can’t believe that anybody actually follows through with them.
The district’s 80-page code of conduct is, of course, beyond the understanding of a 6-year-old. And wouldn’t everyone have been better off if someone at Zachary’s school had used the opportunity to explain to this child why he should leave his cool camping utensil at home from now on? Administrators said the local code of conduct left them no choice. But now he is holed up at home — his mother is teaching him while his family challenges the district’s ruling — worrying about how his friends will treat him once he returns to school.
The “code of conduct” is drafted by school boards at the insistence of the community, which expects it to address the various potential harms that could happen in a school. Nobody wants another Columbine. And sitting in a meeting, it certainly seems prudent to conclude that no weapon in school should be tolerated. Had someone at the time suggested that the Zachary Christie scenario would arise, they would have been ridiculed. And yet anomalous situations arise all the time. That’s how life plays out.
What happened in the Christina School District should not be minimized by pretending a knife isn’t a knife. It’s a knife, and if somebody was hurt, you can bet your bottom dollar that all hell would have broken loose. So don’t chalk the problem up to a nifty camping utensil, when the problem here is the combination of a boneheaded decision by Zachary’s mother to allow him to bring this knife to school, coupled by an even more boneheaded decision to remove the authority to handle incidents with appropriate and relative discretion, and to craft ways to address the situation that are both useful and positive.
But we are so taken by solutions that are clear, swift and absolute. Is this what you had in mind?
Update: In the face of apparent widespread public criticism, the School District has relented on the punishment, allowing Zachary to return to school, promising to rewrite the rules to exempt kindergartners and first graders from the harsh punishment.
What happened in the Christina School District should not be minimized by pretending a knife isn’t a knife. It’s a knife, and if somebody was hurt, you can bet your bottom dollar that all hell would have broken loose. So don’t chalk the problem up to a nifty camping utensil, when the problem here is the combination of a boneheaded decision by Zachary’s mother to allow him to bring this knife to school, coupled by an even more boneheaded decision to remove the authority to handle incidents with appropriate and relative discretion, and to craft ways to address the situation that are both useful and positive.
But we are so taken by solutions that are clear, swift and absolute. Is this what you had in mind?
Update: In the face of apparent widespread public criticism, the School District has relented on the punishment, allowing Zachary to return to school, promising to rewrite the rules to exempt kindergartners and first graders from the harsh punishment.
The school board passed an amendment creating a separate category of rules for students in kindergarten and first grade.While this addresses the issue for one child, the school board has clearly misinterpreted the message. The problem isn’t that it’s punishment was too harsh, but that it’s zero tolerance rule was inherently absurd in its failure to recognize the particulars of the situation. But hey, who doesn’t love zero tolerance. And it’s only a 3 to 5 days suspension for a kindergartner, right? Now if only we can place them on the violent child predator registry.
If these students engage in what is known as a Level III offense for the first time, they will now face three to five days out-of-school suspension and referral to school-based counseling, rather than being sent to the local reform school, as is now the case.
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I had that problem too. Who gives a 6-year-old a knife to play with unsupervised? At that age, they’re still using blunt scissors in class, right?
Anyway, part of what’s missing here is that there’s a difference—perhaps classed as one of intent—between a kid who brings a weapon to school, and a kid who brings a dangerous object to school. I’m guessing that if Zach had brought his father’s battery-powered drill to school for show-and-tell, the teachers would probably have just taken it away from him and made his parents come and get it. Why that wouldn’t work for a small knife is beyond me.
Of course, I grew up in the anarchistic 70’s, so what do I know? I have fun telling young parents that in my high school, the knife policy was that it didn’t count as a weapon as long as the blade didn’t lock and wasn’t longer than 3 inches. I carried a Swiss Army knife in school every day for years. Teachers would borrow it from me.
In a funny sense, our efforts to protect kids from harm has made many incapable of properly handling things that have the potential to be dangerous. Keep them away from sharp objects all their life and they will never know how to properly hand someone a knife. Keep them away from tools and they will never learn how to build something.
Are we better keeping kids safe by keeping their little hands off sharp objects? Of course, that still doesn’t mean you bring them to school.
Do you know what kind of knife it was?
If it was designed for the cub scout set and accompanied by a fork and spoon maybe it was more along the lines of a butter knife then a heart-stabbing knife. That’s what I assumed when I read the stories–but they don’t actually describe it in detail. Crap reporting, but that would be one of your points…
It’s off topic, but I’ve heard similar criticism of the blanket Don’t Talk To Strangers rule on this basis. If you discourage your kids from talking to strange adults even when you’re there with them, how will they learn to recognize when an adult is behaving strangely?
I’m not clear whether it was a Swiss Army knife, or some cub scout butter knife type deal. But I’m sure that the rule doesn’t distinguish between sharp knives and dull ones, small ones or large ones. I’m equally sure that there’s no point in a parent arguing that it’s just a dull knife, or it’s just a small knife. There’s no more reason to bring any knife to school than there is sending this kid to disciplinary school for 45 days.
I think you’ve hit a generalized nail on the head there. The point is that people, especially kids, learn about the world by interacting with it. When they are prevented from doing so, they fail to acquire “common sense” skills with common objects; with knives, basic principles such as cutting away from the body, with matches, how to start as well as stop a fire. There’s even a TED talk about this very point:
[Edit. Note: This is a great video, so I’ve inserted it into the comment.]
Which is worse sitting in the corner wearing a dunce cap or being sent to discipline school for 45 days?
No reason to bring any knife to school? Do you mean at 6? Since, say, 12 or 13 every male I know could /always/ be found carrying a wallet, a cell phone, a house key and pocket knife. To my knowledge, nobody ever got cut, accidentally or otherwise.
Things need to get cut in everyday life, and a sharp blade is perhaps mankind’s most useful tool.
Maybe different parts of the country see knives quite differently.
[Ed. Note: Anon name changed. No one gets to use curmudgeon around here except me.]
A. That “they have them” is not a reason.
B. That no one has gotten cut to your knowledge, particularly since you’re anonymous but even if you weren’t, is meaningless. Since when does anybody care about whether it happens “to your knowledge” except you?
C. Things don’t “need to get cut” in school badly enough that kids need to carry knives in school.
D. How dare you try to use the anonymous name “curmudgeon.” That name is earned, not merely taken.
Well, these days, the risks of “zero tolerance” rules make it, on balance, a very stupid thing for a parent to allow. Allow a kid to carry a weapon like a pocket knife, even though the clear intent was just to show off his cool little eating tool? Nah. Find a variant with just a fork and spoon — and there are such — instead. Or use it as a teaching experience for little Zachary, by heading down to Daddy’s workshop to get to the grinder and remove the knife blade from his camping tool to make it “stupid school safe”
Much better to check the rulebook, and find what’s allowed.
Much better they should carry something innocuous, like titanium knitting needles — along with yarn, of course. (Even the TSA doesn’t — and myth to the contrary, says it never has — mind that going in carry on luggage.)
A kubaton? Heaven forfend — that’s a weapon. A mini-maglite has the same shape and heft, but is just fine. Or, for those folks thumb-fingered, a really hefty marker, like a Sharkie — but be sure to go at the label with a bit of sandpaper, first.
Wasn’t always so. Back in day, when I was in elementary school through high school, many folks — mainly male, but not exclusively — routinely brought a Boy Scout knife (Cub Scouts never carried a Cub Scout knife) or Swiss Army knife or other pocket knife to school; I certainly did, and I wasn’t unusual in that. The only time I can vaguely recall any sort of trouble was back in junior high school, when a bunch of us got caught playing an unsafe mumblety-peg variant — we’d moved from trying to get the knives to stick into the ground to trying to see how close we could get them to do so near our own feet*, and we (understandably) came in for some difficulties.
In our modern, benighted era, I always cautioned my daughters to be sure to check their bookbags before going off to school to make sure that they didn’t have a multitool there.
There were the first hints of some early forms of zero tolerance even back then, though; after the mumblety-peg incident, my math teacher took some time in class to digress into political theory about how a bit of recklessness could lead to excesses by authoritarian bureaucrats, who might end up forbidding something as innocuous as a pocket knife . . .
. . . he went into the whole bit while overtly fiddling with a compass (the kind you use in trig, not direction finding), a device he had (correctly, I think, although I’ve never tried the experiment) described as “a spike you could use to kill an oxe.”
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*Kids: don’t try this at home.
Cub Scouts rules do not even allow you to carry a knife until you have earned your whittlin’ chip which is a Bear level (usually 3rd grade), so definitely not following the rules there.
I agree the school needs to get a little common sense. Here in my county, the school system is now suspending kids from their sports and extracurriculars if they have even been accused (not convicted) of a felony (or juvenile offense that would be a felony). The offense does not have to occur at school or have any relationship to school other than the alleged perpetrator is a student. Ridiculous- convicted and punished on accusation alone.
“membership in the paramilitary organization”
When I was a young’un I knew times were changing in my troop when we changed our name from “Pedro Patrol” to “Fist of God Martyrs’ Brigade”
“what was wrong with Zachary’s, and his mother’s, choice”
As others have said, in the context of the BSA’s youth leadership objectives, Mr. G. has a good point here in that part of teaching cubbies about knives, carving chisels, awls, wood burners, first aid equipment, not to say guns and bows and arrows is to introduce them to the distinction between a tool and a toy and to model the maintenance and safe use of tools of all kinds and the situational awareness for figuring out when a tool is needed.
The zero-tolerance policy makes it near-impossible to actually teach kids these things because it builds a learning environment where mistakes have consequences far beyond what the situation calls for.
Knives — craft knives — have a place in school. In art class. Dangerous chemicals have a place in school — in chem lab. Guns have a place in school — mine had a rifle range in the basement [!]. Mr G. notes that “our efforts to protect kids from harm has made many incapable of properly handling things that have the potential to be dangerous,” and its worth asking where this came from. What combination of values and fears helped build the legal and social structures that get grade schoolers suspended for having a BSA multitiool?
So an camping utensel is now a dangerous weapon. So dangerous that it should be banned from school in case he is playing and gets into a fight and pulls it out as stabs a 6 year old in the heart. (At least I think that is the argument).
So dangerous that he should not be given it in case he gets into a fight at Cubs…and pulls it out etc etc
So dangerous that he should not be given it in case he gets into a fight at the dinner table…and pulls it out etc etc
Teh real problem here is not the “boneheaded decision by Zachary’s mother”. Why is it a boneheaded decision to allow you child to take some eating utensel to school. In case you had not noticed, there are already utensels already in school…and they allow children to use them. Is that not the school themselves giving children dangerous knives just to stab other children with?
The real problem here is that everyone is so utterly scared of getting sacked/sued that ordinary common sense goes out of the window. That only comes about as a result of the legal system that forces an interpretation of legislation beyond anything intended. It forces a blame and cover your a**e culture all the way through the organisation.