Sound The Alarm
It is no wonder our kids have gone crazy; this world is insane. A seventh grader at a school in Euclid, OH was sent to the principal’s office and ordered to spend several hours in detention for inhaling helium from a balloon. I wouldn’t be writing here if I thought he was just being punished for misbehaving (seventh-grade boys usually are), but the principal of his school actually went on television and compared the incident to drug abuse at school because he was “introducing a foreign substance into his body, and the school has a zero tolerance policy against this”. Newsflash: every kid at your school introduces a foreign substance into their body everyday; it’s called cafeteria food.
The principal maintains her punishment is justified because this boy set a dangerous precedent and was a bad example for the younger students, so he had to be punished to the full extent as an example to the rest of the school. Lady, it was helium not crack, give the kid a break, and thank your lucky stars you don’t work for the public school system. I hardly see a helium prank turning into a life long addiction. He’s probably just acting out for attention, guess that worked out for him, huh?
His parents have decided the crime didn’t justify the time and have withdrawn their son from the school. Wave bye-bye to that tuition money. There is a lesson to be learned here, but it is one I am sure no one at St. Robert’s will learn. Boys will be boys, and sometimes you just have to let them because our kids have so little childhood left these days. I’m not saying let them run over your school. Sure, he should have gotten in a little trouble for the prank, but did he actually hurt himself or anyone else? No. He got rewarded with a news story and a new school. What do you think he learned from this little incident? I’m guessing it wasn’t behavior modification.
June 11th, 2002 at 11:27 am
Stop the insanity:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/06/06/crime.spitball.reut/index.html