Josh is five, and the day before his kindergarten graduation he and some buddies found a pocket knife under a bush on their way to school. He stuck it in his backpack, thought better of it, and left the knife in a park.
His principal got wind of the "incident" and suspended him for having intended to bring the knife to school.
Principal Chris Lineberry of Queen Creek, Arizona then spent the rest of the day wiggling around, trying to evade blame for a stupid act of biblical scale. He finally relented, apologized, and allowed as how Josh could go ahead and graduate with this class.
We send our kids to school so that they may sit at the feet of wise educators, don't we?
(Another H/T to GMA John.)
3 comments:
My child goes to this school and Principal Lineberry is a wonderful principal. Truly. This is his last year at Harmon and I have suffered through a crazy year with him being one of the only good parts of that school. The parents in this district are incredibly low rent. They don't get involved in their child's education...they don't back up the school's discipline system, teachers spend most of their day focusing on the two or three troublemakers in the classroom (and then have to deal with the parents who are upset that their child has been labeled a "troublemaker" just because he has anxiety issues he tends to take out on classmates smaller than him. (Rolls eyes)
This neighborhood has gone downhill, considerably. I am not surprised that a knife was found in that bush down the street from my home.
Here's a question for you...what was a 5 year old doing walking to school WITHOUT HIS PARENTS? They live about four blocks from school. Who lets their five year old walk to school with other kids? With kids that think it is okay to go walking through other people's yards and pick up a knife?
I am betting that Principal Lineberry found out that this kid had put the knife in his backpack from one of the other kids walking.....but hadn't heard that it was put down again. I bet that kid wasn't able to adequately convince the principal that he had not brought it onto campus. I bet this kid has a history of issues on campus. Bet you a hundred bucks.
What was this 5 year old doing in someone's yard, walking to school without his parents....picking up the knife and putting it in his backpack. The kid probably admitted to Lineberry that he had put it in his backpack...and how many five year olds do you know that can explain that they took it out again and put it back? The kid was coached for the TV video...he was obviously coached from the clip I saw.
Principal Lineberry did apologize, eventually, but these parents didn't give him the chance to do it after all the facts were in....no, they hopped on the phone so they could get on TV. Be famous and all that.
Classy. Real Classy. I'm sick of the children always being the victims of the teachers and principals. These children are victims of their parents crappy parenting....WHERE were those parents when that kid picked up the knife?
I doubt you and I would ever have a meetings of the minds on this because the idea of a boy with a knife doesn't set me howling and peeing my pants. And because the notion of kindergarteners walking to school unsupervised recalls pleasant personal memories of doing just that while Dad was working and Mom taking care of the sisters at home.
Five may be a little young, but my grandpa was teaching me to whittle in my kindergarten days. And let's remember, this lad found the small knife and only thought about taking it to school. If he cached the thing and planned to retrieve it for his personal collection of cool stuff, he's doing exactly what virtually every kid I ever knew would have done.
Before pom-pom girls turned soccer mas hijacked the national dialogue, the Cub Scout organization offered official Cub Scout knives to lads as young as eight. You may recall school yard and church basement blood baths from that.
A Google search on this Lineberry guy, combined with some years of experience in the public education racket, persuades me he's just another academic hustler, scared stiff of making a mistake that could cost him his chance at the next step up the ladder.
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