Fourth Grader Suspended over FAKE Jello shot — The idea here is to teach kids that due process has no meaning. And also that “play acting” or being a child is a bad thing. Good work you locals in New Orleans — well done. This is a town that sells booze out of walk-by windows.
An 8-year-old girl was suspended for nine days for bringing to school what appeared to be about 30 “Jell-O shots” — though it was unclear whether they contained alcohol.
The incident occurred November 29, as the girl stood after classes outside Geraldine Boudreaux Elementary School in Terrytown, a New Orleans suburb. A teacher spotted liquid dripping out of the student’s bookbag and found what looked like the small cups of alcohol-laced gelatin that are sold in bars, schools spokesman Jeff Nowakowski said.
The girl told the principal that her mother, who works in a bar, makes alcoholic shots at home and sells them at work. The fourth-grader said her mother had instructed her to take the shots to school and sell them, three for $1, to make some money for Christmas, Nowakowski said.
The gelatin was turned over to the sheriff’s department for testing to see if it contained alcohol.
The girl was suspended for violating school rules against possessing or trying to distribute a “lookalike,” or something that appears to contain drugs or alcohol
Like an 8-year-old is up to date on stupid laws. What a-holes!!!
link from Keith Burel who says:
You’ve likely seen this. The “lookalike” rule sounds like
the CYA rule to me. (What happens if it turns out we were
wrong? We’ll make a rule that says we’re right anyway.)“The girl was suspended for violating school rules against
possessing or trying to distribute a “lookalike,” or
something that appears to contain drugs or alcohol. Under
the lookalike rule, the girl’s suspension will stand no
matter what the sheriff’s department finds. “The school
system’s position is, it doesn’t matter if it had alcohol in
it or not,” Nowakowski said.I guess the administrators will get to keep their jobs
because they are providing a lookalike education….— K B [Keith Burel]
P.S. While other nations are beating us up in education,
we’re arguing over bringing jello to school.
The reasons school administrators love these zero tolerance rules is because they don’t have to face any consequences of being wrong! Black parents can’t complain that whites are being treated differently, because everyone is treated exactly the same, regardless of the facts.
Thus a kid who brings a fingernail clipper is treated exactly like the kid who brought a loaded gun.
The main problem I see with this is that it doesn’t prepare kids for the real world. In the real world no one sees the world in black and white terms. Employers, prosecutors, and judges all deal with the grey. They take the specific facts into consideration and make their judgments accordingly.
Kids today are learning from these draconian rules that it doesn’t matter what they do, because they’re going to get into trouble anyway. Schools should not be teaching that message.
What I really hate is that someone out there is thinking this is making their children safer. Safer. Safer from what? Jello?
We allow adults trials where we work to find the facts but don’t allow children that same right. It’s hypocrasy. Of course the US is moving closer to that for adults too with the Patriot act, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.
Hysteria (via colour coded terror alert charts) leads to lack of reasoning which leads to this. Everyone needs to take a step back and find their brain.
Too bad that’s too much to ask.
“I guess the administrators will get to keep their jobs
because they are providing a lookalike education…” – I love it!.
The Real World math results just came in. Of 29 industrial nations surveyed, the US came in 20th. Who the hell did we beat?
All the articles I could find would just admit we’re on a par with Spain, Poland, Hungary and Latvia.
In the real world no one sees the world in black and white terms.
Sorry, but this is too easy:
‘You are either with us or against us …’ GWB
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/11/06/gen.attack.on.terror/
That seems pretty B&W to me.
In any case, this is a pretty absurd rule for a host of reasons. One of which is the fact that children as young as 8 and perhaps younger, have to be fully aware of the marketing techniques of alcohol producers. The onus is on small children to know what potential things may be “lookalikes” of alcoholic beverages.
Frankly, I think I could easily come up with an alcoholic version for nearly every beverage a normal child drinks. Does that mean all these children are providing “look alike” products?
Orange juice = Screwdriver
Coke = Rum & Coke
Sprite/7-Up = Gin/Vodka Tonic
Etc., etc.
I think Burel nailed the fact that this is a CYA rule for the administrators.
Typical “Zero Tolerance'” bullshit. This type of policy is ruining America’s schools.
‘You are either with us or against us …’ GWB
Who ever said that W lives in the real world? As far as I know, he’s living in his own delusions.
…nah, the policy isn’t ruining America’s schools…the schools are already in ruin…this is just more sliding into the abyss
Read this article:
http://www.policyreview.org/dec04/kaplan_print.html
Finding fault with every decision administrator make is what leads to the zero-tolerance rules. The administrators are not afraid of what happens if they’re wrong, they’re afraid of what happens if they are right. They are right 95% of the time, and yet every parent throws a fit and files a greivance and threatens to sue no matter the guilt or innocence of their child.
The reason our schools are going down hill is because teachers and bureaucrats are forced to parent our children, yet their parents won’t give them the power or benefit of the doubt.
Teaching is by its nature “parentis en locus” (I forget my latin), whereby the adults at school take on the temporary responsibility of acting as the temporary parents of their students. As a Cal graduate, I know Berkeley students fought during the Free Speech Movement to get out from under this rule at college. But college students are adults!
Students need adults around to supervise them. Remember the good old days when your neighbors looked out for your children, and told you if anything looked amiss. And you didn’t yell at them for presuming to tell you how to raise your children, and to mind their own business.
This all leads directly to the lack of discipline in schools, which is root cause of all these problems. Rules are created to prevent lawsuits and angry parents. So a teacher is not allowed to even touch 2 children who are fighting in the middle of his/her classroom, and has to wait for a security guard while they maul each other.
Can’t you also imagine how else this Jello shot situation could have turned out. Kid goes to school and sells shots to fellow students. Students go home and tell Mom how cool it was to drink real jello shots. Mom freaks out and the administrators are yelled at anyway, and Dvorak posts a story about how administrators are powerless to keep the drug and drunken white trash culture out of our schools.
This is so similar to the position that “every kid who gets into a fight gets suspended”. It doesn’t matter if one kid was standing around and got pounced upon. If he hits back (while lying on his back on the ground), he gets suspended too. Which brings me to my favorite punishment for kids who cut school — suspend them.