Kid suspended for drawing a gun

[Gemini Cricket]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

Back on topic, slightly - if I had not been able to express myself at all in doodles, wherever they land on the scale of wrongness, my rage would have grown. My frustration with the system would have grown. My need to act out would have grown.

Suppression is suppression and it doesn't bode well.

One more thing, GC - I've asked before, where does it end? Where do you draw the line as something that's ok to draw on your homework? When is it time to tattle, to persecute, to control?

So doodle, create, do what you need to but there's a place for that. And putting a picture of a gun on a piece of paper that is going to be seen by a teacher is not appropriate. It, like the last line in the article says, disrupts the process.

I don't see this as an act of suppression. I see it as a lesson of appropriateness in a period of time post-Columbine. Your friend's comment (bringing a gun in to kill a teacher) may not have been taken seriously at all back then, nowdays it would be. A kid saying that stuff now would be seen as a danger to those around her.

It's a different time from when we were in school. There weren't huge shooting sprees in schools when I was a kid. Now there are.

And, to answer your question, unless it's stipulated in the homework itself, it's never okay to turn in homework with doodles on it. At least that's the way it was in my school. You'd get your paper handed back to you and you'd have to re-write the entire thing.

Anytime there's an occurrance that is threatening or can be miscontrued as a threat, that's when it's okay for the school to address it. There are varying degrees of penalty, but there needs to be some sort of sense of accountability for someone's actions. If there isn't, then it gives the message that it's okay to continue that behavior.