Now It's a Pencil?

When I was in grade school, at recess boys and girls used to regularly gather around children from a less fortunate family and taunt and chase them. The teachers assigned to the yard duty consistently ignored the chanting group of children circling around four other kids. The humiliated kids used to pretend to go along, but you could see the pain in their faces. Sometimes I would go stand with them so more people would be on their side, but I didn't yet know how to tell others. Since the adults on the playground weren't interested, the unspoken lesson to me was that sometimes kids had to handle things on their own and that some things we just didn't talk about. The entire school just looked the other way.

Fast forward. Today we call this bullying and so much attention is given to the slightest infraction that stories repeatedly hit cable news. Seminars are given and Lifetime movies are made all telling us how bad it is to bully anyone for who they are. The kids in my school were merely poor. Imagine the movie that could have been made if they were of another ethnicity or gay?

Our North American school culture is on red alert lest someone be offended in any manner. We must protect everyone from everything every minute. And if we can't prevent it, we'd better jump all over it once it dares to happen!

A few years ago we heard about the "sexual harassment" when a kindergartener innocently kissed a little girl on the cheek.  Christmas Break is now retitled to cover up that reality. Entire states embrace curriculum embracing any kind of sexuality and any number of mommies and daddies.  Words the founding fathers used and commandments they posted as a matter of course are now deemed offensive and are being systematically removed from public buildings everywhere. Even the American flag - our country's flag - bothers some citizens! Oh, don't forget that it isn't fair to speak only English. (These same people don't blink when they go to France and everyone there speaks...French.)

Now we have a second grade boy playing "Marine and bad guy"  with his buddy at recess. His buddy was the bad guy and he was the Marine, cuz that's what his dad was. He used his pencil to fire "boom" and get the bad guy. The result for this natural child play was a two-day suspension for each boy. Never mind that they stopped immediately when their teacher told them to. Guns make children afraid and other children might be offended. They should never have done this.

Since this made the national news I imagine different legal groups or even the ACLU are getting involved. All over something normal children would do. Initially I wasn't going to give my girl so much as a squirt gun, but when she made them out of sticks and Legos, I realized it was part of play that I couldn't stop.

Kids play "good" and "bad" guy, and I'm thankful they can even think in terms of good and evil with all of the political correctness watering down reality every time I turn around. Gotta go. I'm off to buy a case of pencils and donate it to the local elementary school.