Cub Scouts arm children with dangerous weapons.

One of the things that I worry about is that the governmental school system (which sometimes manages to educate) is run by morons. It seems that the worst, most incompetent, sorts make it to the top of the bureaucratic system called “the school system.” Competency is out, and politics is in.

I want to mention the case of Zachary Christie as an example. Zachary is a very bright six-year-old who attends the government school in Newark, Delaware. Zachary also recently joined the Cub Scouts and got one of those neat contraptions that the Scouts like to use where one utinsile can have a fork, a spoon, or a knife come out of it. Apparently the Cub Scouts are arming children with dangerous weapons—if you accept the position of the local school district.

Like most little boys Zachary wanted to show off his neat new tool from Cub Scouts so he took it to school to use at lunchtime. That is when the morons in the educational system stepped in with their “zero tolerance” bullshit, pronounced the eating utensil to be a dangerous weapon and had Zachary expelled from school. It gets worse. The morons filed charges against the child and he has to appear in court and faces a sentence of 45 days in reform school.

Zachary’s mother is currently home-schooling him while trying to get the expulsion overturned. I would urge her to reconsider. Get the expulsion overturned, but continue to home-school him. Don’t send him to an institution run by morons. The school is defending their actions saying, (shall we all say it together), that it is “for the best interests of the children.” George Evans, the head moron on the school board, turns into a little drama queen whining about how “no parent wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because they was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife.” I suggest that George “Weepy” Evans immediately confiscate all pencils and pens as well. You could poke an eye out with one of them a lot easier than the Cub Scout eating utensil.

When I was a schoolboy, admittedly before the schools went completely bonkers, we used to play mumbly peg on the school lawn. If you aren’t familiar with it, the game requires a pocketknife of one kind or another—though it can be played with larger knives as well—and we did, though that was more at the school’s summer camp.

According to the New York Times, Delaware was also the place where a school district expelled a third-grade girl for a year. Her grandmother sent a birthday cake to the school, along with a knife to cut the cake. The teacher first took the knife and cut the cake and then called the principal of the school and expelled the child. Another boy in the school system, though older, was given a pocketknife by another student and then he was suspended. His mother “has since been home-schooling him instead of sending him to reform school.” In 2007 the school also expelled a girl who used a utility knife to cut “windows out a paper house for a class project.”

I will leave the final word with Zachary, who clearly is intelligent enough to figure out the situation. He said: “I just think the other kids may tease me for being in trouble. But I think the rules are what is wrong, not me.”

If you want to sign a petition in favor of Zachary go here. I recommend it.