While looking through the news of the day, one story caught my attention right away. It seems a future domestic terrorist has been discovered lurking in the halls of the Hyannis West Elementary School on Cape Cod in the form of five year old Joseph Cardosa.(
5 year old threatened with suspension.) What was this youngster's crime? He dared to take two
LEGO® piec
es and make them into the shape of a gun. In the letter to the parents threatening him with suspension, the school says the boy was using toys inappropriately. I would like to see the policy the letter is referring to because I suspect there is nothing mentioned about what the appropriate use of
LEGO®'s is.
I remember having them as a child and all four of my own children had buckets of them too. As I recall, there were plenty of things made out of them to look like tanks, planes with missiles, and toy figures with guns lying around the house all the time. In the above referenced articled, the author cites several other absurd cases from around the country and the involved school system's ridiculous response to them. All of these things raise some serious questions.
Who are the people we have teaching our kids who could be so stupid as to overreact to these things? If Mr. Cardosa was running around pointing the gun at other students and pretending to shoot them, I would agree with the school in intervening. Not because of the LEGO®s, more because of the behavior exhibited. Instead, what we hear from the Principal of the school is that person's own apparent irrational fear of anything which even remotely looks like a gun, as if just the shape is dangerous. This presumably educated person told FOX 25 “We need a safe environment for our students. While someone might
think that making a Lego gun is just an action of a 5-year-old, to
other 5-year-olds, that might be a scary experience.” Really? A scary experience to who?
My experience as a parent and youth sports coach is the less of a big deal we adults make of things, the better off the children are. It is not mentioned, but I wonder how many of the fellow students ran out of the building screaming in fear when young Mr. Cardosa brandished his newly made LEGO® gun? I wonder if the teachers present called 911 and placed the students under the desks to avoid whatever harm could come from plastic?
By the way, the picture I used is just one of thousands on the web. Kind of looks like a gun, don't you think? I guess I better watch for my letter in the mail too.
