Two Boys Suspended For Pointing Pencils

[Hum]

A 7-year-old boy, who was suspended for two days after playing a game of make-believe with his friend, returned to school on Wednesday.

On Friday, Christopher Marshall, a second grader at Driver Elementary School in Suffolk, Virginia and his classmate were playing with their pencils, pointing them at each other and making machine gun noises when a concerned teacher pulled them into the principals' office.

"I got a call from Christopher's school at 12:30 on Friday," the boy's mother, Wendy Marshall, 34, a stay-at-home mother of five, told Yahoo! Shine. "His teacher told me that Christopher and his friend were playing with pencils, making machine gun and 'bang bang' noises. I asked if they were pointing the pencils at anyone else, if they were angry or hostile, disrupting class, or refused to stop when asked and the teacher said no. I told her that I would speak to Christopher but his teacher said she was under obligation to report them anyway."

Wendy immediately picked up her son from school and when she got there, the principal explained that due to the school's zero tolerance policy against weapons or anything that resembles a weapon, Christopher would be suspended on Monday and Tuesday, allowed to return on Wednesday. Bethanne Bradshaw, a spokesperson for Suffolk Public Schools could not be reached for comment but according to a report from Fox43 she said, "A pencil is a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made" and that "Some children would consider it threatening, who are scared about shootings in schools or shootings in the community.

Kids don't think about 'Cowboys and Indians' anymore, they think about drive-by shootings and murders and everything they see on television news every day." According to the Suffolk News-Herald, the school had received hundreds of emails and on one day fielded about 75 phone calls per hour regarding the matter. Bradshaw wrote in an email to the paper that the reaction to the incident was overwhelming. ?Opinions were very strong and mean-spirited, and often included abusive language and profanity.?

"I told the principal that Christopher's father is an ex-Marine and he was just emulating his dad," said Wendy. "Apparently the students were told at the beginning of the year that they couldn't pretend that objects were guns?there are only four weeks left in school.

Wendy took her son home and asked him to explain what happened. "He was shaking with fear and didn't understand why he was in trouble," she said. "So we reenacted the scene and I told him that he did nothing wrong."

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[Growled Member]

Oh my freaking gosh!!! How ignorant can schools get?

[techbeck]

Now kids cannot be kids huh...yea, I love how the world is turning out...

[Sylar0]

Im with the school the kid shouldn't be emulating his dad even if he is a solider.... im sure the dad would agree. If I was a soldier and I never will be, I would not want my kid glorifying it, Plus someone could have got hurt with the pencils.

[freak180]

Im with the school the kid shouldn't be emulating his dad even if he is a solider.... im sure the dad would agree. If I was a soldier and I never will be, I would not want my kid glorifying it, Plus someone could have got hurt with the pencils.

I guess your parents taped you up with bubble wrap right?

[techbeck]

Im with the school the kid shouldn't be emulating his dad even if he is a solider.... im sure the dad would agree. If I was a soldier and I never will be, I would not want my kid glorifying it, Plus someone could have got hurt with the pencils.

Ok, I am not sure if you are serious...or trying to be funny here. There was nothing, zero, zip, zilch....wrong with what the kids did. Common sense would of shown this and obviously the school has none. The kid was 7yrs old....its what kids do. If kids cannot be kids and if people cannot think and evaluate the situation properly, then I feel for the future leaders/adults of this world. Its going to get to the point where you cannot say or do anything without getting in to trouble.

[Hum]

nip those serial killers in the bud

[Sylar0]

I guess your parents taped you up with bubble wrap right?

Nope

Ok, I am not sure if you are serious...or trying to be funny here. There was nothing, zero, zip, zilch....wrong with what the kids did. Common sense would of shown this and obviously the school has none. The kid was 7yrs old....its what kids do. If kids cannot be kids and if people cannot think and evaluate the situation properly, then I feel for the future leaders/adults of this world. Its going to get to the point where you cannot say or do anything without getting in to trouble.

Nope im serious. No such thing as common sense. I remember our teachers telling us we were forbidden from drawing pictures of guns... yes i'm serious but then I come from a sans gun nation,

[freak180]

get them while they're young... :rolleyes: This is just the beginning

[techbeck]

Nope im serious. No such thing as common sense. I remember our teachers telling us we were forbidden from drawing pictures of guns... yes i'm serious but then I come from a sans gun nation,

Well, I think it is a sad world we live in where fear and ignorance (the school) controls people and their actions.

[Sylar0]

Well, I think it is a sad world we live in where fear and ignorance (the school) controls people and their actions.

Ignorance of what? Even with the Dad I still don't approve nor should he.....

[techbeck]

Ignorance of what? Even with the Dad I still don't approve nor should he.....

Ignorance on the school for not being able to evaluate the situation and act accordingly. We are going to disagree no matter what here and I am not going to argue this. All I know is that if a 7 year old points a pencil at me and makes noises, I am not going to be running away and hiding in a corner fearing for my life.

[Rippleman]

Now kids cannot be kids huh...yea, I love how the world is turning out...

kids can be kids still, just because they can't emulate a gun doesn't mean that's not being a kid.

All I know is that if a 7 year old points a pencil at me and makes noises, I am not going to be running away and hiding in a corner fearing for my life.

No one would run away, its preventive behavior conditioning that is preemptive in nature.

[Growled Member]

Ignorance of what? Even with the Dad I still don't approve nor should he.....

Maybe the teacher should have taken the boys aside and told them what they did was not allowed in school and please not do that again?

[techbeck]

One last comment...glad the mother of the kid told him he did nothing wrong. I played with toy guns as a kid and went around the neighborhood acting like I was shooting my friends. No want I wanted to shoot someone for real. Probably because I had good parents that taught me right from wrong, real from fiction.

What a different world this is tho...

[Growled Member]

If they want to stop this, they need to get the media to stop producing such violent content.

[Stoffel]

Im with the school the kid shouldn't be emulating his dad even if he is a solider.... im sure the dad would agree. If I was a soldier and I never will be, I would not want my kid glorifying it, Plus someone could have got hurt with the pencils.

You got to be kidding right? When you were young you never played cowboy and indian, or you acted out one of your favorite cartoon shows like GI Joe or Thundercats?

Boys do this all the time.

And the fact that you come from a country with no gun culture has nothing to do with it.

Ignorance on the school for not being able to evaluate the situation and act accordingly. We are going to disagree no matter what here and I am not going to argue this. All I know is that if a 7 year old points a pencil at me and makes noises, I am not going to be running away and hiding in a corner fearing for my life.

When they pointed at me and made noises, I stuck up my thumb, aimed my index finger and shot back :)

Maybe the teacher should have taken the boys aside and told them what they did was not allowed in school and please not do that again?

That would be the more sensible thing to do if you really would have an issue with boys being boys

[Dinggus]

Im with the school the kid shouldn't be emulating his dad even if he is a solider.... im sure the dad would agree. If I was a soldier and I never will be, I would not want my kid glorifying it, Plus someone could have got hurt with the pencils.

You don't want your child to look up to you? Also, what's wrong with being a soldier?

[ATLien_0]

Im two fold on this. While part of me is saying, they are just kids, and well I remember having fun like this when I was a kid. However in this day in age, violence is glorified a lot, kids are being exposed to it much more. Yes there is a Zero tolerance policy It would seem appropriate for the Teacher to be able to talk to the kids and at least explain why they shouldn't do that before taking to the principles office.

[DocM]

It's bloody stupid to micromanage political correctness, especially to this degree. Our schools are turning into a sissified world akin to that in Demolition Man.

[The Evil Overlord]

Wow, just wow......................

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Gunplay has been and always will be a staple for boys make-believe play!

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Nope im serious. No such thing as common sense. I remember our teachers telling us we were forbidden from drawing pictures of guns... yes i'm serious but then I come from a sans gun nation,

I went to school in the UK and there was nothing stopping us from drawing whatever we wanted. Perhaps it was a simpler time when kids could still be kids though.

With that in mind, given that this took place in the US I can sort of see where this is coming from. With the recent shootings happening it's understandable to be on edge. At the same time though, I'm pretty sure if you used your head you could tell the difference between a child just having fun and a child that may be...disturbed.

[TheLegendOfMart]

It's bloody stupid to micromanage political correctness, especially to this degree. Our schools are turning into a sissified world akin to that in Demolition Man.

You can't blame them considering the kind of gun culture you guys have, the amount of school/university shootings and the fact that kids have "my first gun" and parents who leave their guns unlocked could easily bring one into school and shoot someone.

If they want to stop this, they need to get the media to stop producing such violent content.

Yeah its totally the medias fault.............................. :no:

[francescob]

Will somebody please think of the children?! We clearly need to ban pencils from school, not to mention erasers, that could as well be used to emulate hand grenades!