Sit down and obey like the sack of meat you are is the only lesson a kid gets from this.
An irate Staten Island mom blasted a grade school principal Wednesday for treating her son like a pint-sized Plaxico Burress after he brought a 2-inch-long toy gun to school.
“This principal is a bully and a coward, and needs to be held accountable,” said Laura Timoney, 44, after her teary fourth-grader was nearly suspended for playing with the tiny toy at lunch. The school should be embarrassed. This is a common-sense issue.”
Patrick Timoney, 9, was terrified when he was yanked into the principal’s office to discuss the teeny-weeny plastic “weapon.”
“The gun was so little,” the boy said. “I don’t understand why the principal got so upset. I was a little nervous. They made me sign a statement.”
Patrick and a friend were playing with Lego figures in the school cafeteria on Tuesday when he pulled out the faux machine gun and stuck it in the hands of his plastic police officer. Boom! Trouble ensued, with Patrick’s mom getting a phone call from Public School 52 Principal Evelyn Mastroianni saying her son had somehow gone from straight A’s to the NRA.
[…]
Laura Timoney remained upset. Her son, a typically eager student, asked to stay home yesterday because he thought the principal was mad at him. The mother said she expects an apology and may sue.
Teachers and principals aren’t educators anymore. They are prison guards and it shows.
Swoon!
Credit where it is due. You wrote correctly ‘Lego’ and not the incorrect ‘Legos’. Keep up the good work.
Dear God! What has this world come to? The school principal exerting her adult powers on a 9 years old, playing with Lego guns….
What is wrong with these people??? This stupidity is happening over and over. Hey, come out of it. Wake up! The brain is to be used!
American school system in all it’s glory
I imagine there’s a “no toy guns” rule at the school. There should be. The problem with relying on “common sense” is that it introduces a slippery slope. What if the toy gun was 3-inches? What about 6-inches? It’s easier to stick to the rule, “no toy guns”.
Yeah, perhaps the principal overreacted. But so did the mom by calling her a “bully and a coward” and threatening to sue. She’s probably already interviewing lawyers.
We go overseas to kill people with our guns, to force them to be more like us (wonder how that will work out).
Guns are then seen buy kids as instruments of power.
Schools see kids “acting” (literally, as in theater) powerful, and the administration feels threatened.
The children appear more mature than the adults in this case.
Is this “statement” that they authorities required the 9 year old to sign.
I will never smile again.
I will never smile again.
I will never smile again.
I will never smile again.
I will never smile again.
I will never smile again.
I will never smile again.
I will never smile again.
#4, that would be “American school system in all its glory”…
This is what happens when you let the morons from the bottom of the class run things.
We need to take back the schools from the edu-crats.
More and more of this as women obtain higher positions in school admin
Even with a “no toy guns” rule, common sense would lead the principle to say quietly and calmly “That is against our rule, please don’t bring it here again” and maybe confiscate it.
I would love to see the statement the child was coerced to sign.
Let’s see
– kid threatened with suspension for a 2-inch two gun
– kid suspended for a plastic knife in the lunch room
– kid suspended for taking an aspirin for a headache
– kid threatened with suspension for bringing a science project to school that the principle thought was a bomb
– and the list goes on and on and on…..
Can someone explain to me exactly what is being taught in the schools today (other than there is no God) and why I should send my kids there?
What happened to zero tolerance? This child should have been expelled. End of story.
Please add appropriate amount of sarcasm. Thank you!
Well, I certainly don’t carry toy guns….
It’s not like he brought a 2 inch lynching kit to school.
RBG
Imagine this scenario…. the principle used “common sense” and just told the kid to put away the toy, no formal report was issued. The following week the same kid brings a real gun to school and kills someone. Then everyone would blame the principal for not following protocol by overlooking the original infraction.
She’s in a “screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t” position.
Not to be too picky here, But I have a 6 year old Lego “Maniac” and I too am having fun building them again as an adult…..but that doesn’t look like a Lego gun. More like a Mega Blocks. Maybe from the Halo set. If that’s the case, the kid plays with lame building blocks. 😛
Good thing he didn’t commit a serious crime like drawing on a desk.
NYC schools send you straight to jail for that sort of behavior.
Well, IT IS NOT A GUN !!! It is a MODEL OF A GUN !!! The “educated” IDIOTS RUNNING THE SCHOOL DON’T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE !!!
“It was only a toy gun”… famous last words before a cop shoots or tasers someone because they had a weapon that was meticulously crafted to be an EXACT copy of the real thing. #18 has it right… zero tolerance, because who knows what may happen next week.
Also – my kids’ school has a zero tolerance policy for TOYS! If it isn’t needed for school, it is left at home. The article above doesn’t specifically say that he was caught playing with a toy gun… it could simply have been the TOY itself.
Also – maybe was already warned to NOT BRING Lego to school because he was caught playing with it in class before this… stop criticizing the administration immediately – you will NEVER know what led up to this incident and the subsequent punishment. Good for the Principal.
Why did they have him sign something a child can not enter in to a contact until they are 18.
#14 I agree with you 100%. The only reason I see is that you are being FORCED to pay for government schools, so you might as well get your money’s worth, right?
#22 Which is why you should do away with government schools and have only private schools. That way, if you want to send your kid to a d-bag dictatorial school w/ zero tolerance, you can. And if you want your kids playing with legos as part of the educational experience (my bro loved legos and he is now an architect) that you can do that too. One size fits all government schools is the problem here. The administration is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Only the ruling elite should be familiar and comfortable with any kind of weapon. The subjects are better off as passive and obedient.
Democracy presumes equality so that needs to be abolished as well.
#18, 22, zero tolerance is for idiots who don’t want to have to think.
I for one applaud this brave and noble Principle. I know this Principle instantly and courageously thought this through as he/she/it risked life and limb wrestling this gargantuan kid to the ground to get control of the gun.
Remember, “he brought a 2-inch-long toy gun” You know those guns have 0.0625″” long bullets, that have mamed and killed or at least poked an eye out.
Plus, if you look closely at the picture, the gun has a silencer. Silencers are illegal. So you have this kid with a automatic rifle shooting 0.0625″ long bullets silently.
Doesn’t that just scare the crap out of you!!!!!
Can you image him having this in his pocket when he goes through Airport Security?? Or maybe he goes and visits our nations capital or white-house. Where does it end????
Shouldn’t we be equipping our solders with such a formidable deadly and very portable weapon??? They can easily have multiple pockets filled with such deadly weapons and millions of ammunition rounds. Oh the horror this Principle saved us from!!!!
When the Alcida Taliban see this gun and are busy laughing, we kill them all. It’s perfect!!!!!!
# 18 dm:
Oh boy! The hypothetical situation game! Let’s play!
* What if the principal had done nothing — then she wouldn’t have gotten her name in the paper and on TV!
* What it the kid now grows up to hate authority figures and becomes the next Unabomber?
* What if the principal saw the gun and just as she was about to do something about it, a giant asteroid hit the school at 45,000 miles per hour and vaporized everyone within 100 miles? Gee, then that kid would be in real trouble, eh?
* What if Spartacus had had a Piper Cub?
– – – – –
# 22 Canuck:
So I guess the principal should have hauled out her own .357 Magnum and blown the kid’s head “clean off,” as Dirty Harry put it? I don’t care if the gun was an exact replica of some real weapon — it was two inches long for Pete’s sake! I’m amazed the principal’s eyesight was good enough to make out what it was from a distance!
I agree. This lack of common sense is outrageous. Principals are becoming dictators now. I’m a student and a middle school and i’m 13 years old. Most of my teachers are cruel. They won’t let us talk. They yell at us just for asking somebody for a pencil.We have a right of speech. Also, the teacher gets mad just for 2 Lego guns? It seems to me that she last her mind.This is just a boy trying to have fun with his best friend.