Spooky Nanny-state Nonsense

A couple of topical items from "zero-tolerance" government-run schools:

1. A fifth-grade student in Georgia was removed from school and forced to undergo a psychological evaluation before returning because he drew a scary picture in art class, the result which freaked out his ninny homeroom teacher. Just a few small problems with this course of events:

A. The art class assignment "'was to draw a scary mask or picture - basically a Halloween activity,' [art teacher Lloyd] Harold said."

B. Teacher Harold himself helped to "shade the sketched eyes to give the drawing an even creepier look".

So the poor kid, Jordan Hood, was threatened with being booted from school for basically doing what he was told.

A spokesflack for the school district sums up the situation nicely:

"'We live in an age where there is some hypersensitivity,' Bucky Burnsed, Savannah-Chatham school system spokesman, said Thursday."

You don't say?

Well, what are you going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again?

Nothing? I thought so.



2. Schools in Texas were turning away students from Friday night's football games because the kids naively thought that dressing up for the games in Halloween costumes on Halloween would be a fun thing to do. The only problem was that the schools have banned costumes on school property:

"One girl was stopped when she arrived at Handley Field dressed as a New York Yankee.

'They told me to wipe my black eye off and take my hat off and put a jacket on and I could come in,' she said. 'We're not bad kids. I'm student body president. We're supporting our high school.'"

Welcome to real life, hon, where officious bureaucrats make asinine rules "for security reasons" which force people to give up any pretense of having the freedom to live their lives as they see fit.

Hey - couldn't football uniforms be considered "costumes"? Maybe the players should be outfitted with clear ponchos in order to comply with the draconian dress code.

How strict were the costume Nazis manning the gates? Here's one example from the comments section of the story:

"If you think banning a 3 year old is bad, a mother and her 9 month old child were denied entrance to the Southwest-Trimble Tech game last night. The mother wasn't wearing the costume, the infant was. He had a sleeper on that had some sort of design on it so they decided to to ban them both."

I'm sure the crowd felt safer once the infant potential troublemaker was bounced. He could have been a terrorist, you know.

One principal finally took it upon herself to convince a higher-up to at least allow in costumed students who weren't wearing masks:

"'I knew when we banned a 3-year-old Snow White, we were in trouble,' Alexander said. 'Common sense finally prevailed.'"

Too bad she had to kneel in obeisance to whoever passes for control-freak Superintendent Chalmers down there before being allowed to make a simple decision that resolved a situation that never should have happened in the first place. Who would have thought that high-school kids would want to dress up and have "fun" at a (supposedly) "fun" event on a holiday night?

Happy Halloween, kids!!