6 Year Old Cub Scout: Gets Reform School for Camping Tool?

I don’t know how any­one could think a 6 year old should go to reform school for car­ry­ing a camp­ing tool to school, but that’s what the rules say for this Zachary Christie in Delaware.  I’m think­ing this is OVERKILL & that this boy (along with fel­low stu­dents) could be harmed MORE from sus­pend­ing him for 45 days & stat­ing he should attend a reform school.  Reform­ing him for what?  Being 6.  He was try­ing to eat lunch with the camp­ing uten­sil that his par­ents got him because he is excited to be a Cub Scout. His mother did not know he had taken it with him.

Should he have brought the tool to school? Prob­a­bly not.  How­ever, I believe this is an exam­ple of a rule that had unin­tended con­se­quences to it that were not fore­seen when it was put into place. The rule is to pro­tect kids from dan­gers, weapons & stu­dents who may hurt oth­ers. On the sur­face it is a VERY good thing, no one wants to over­look real dan­gers.  But because the rule is blan­ket & does not take into account the dif­fer­ent cases that can occur it puts ALL kids into a threat zone if they are seen to vio­late the pol­icy.  Even if they were never intend­ing to be vio­lent or had what most rea­son­able peo­ple would con­sider a weapon.  I don’t con­sider this an intended weapon, it’s not a hunt­ing knife or a gun. I think it’s rea­son­able to see this sim­ply as an eat­ing uten­sil, not a weapon.

In this case the child is 6 & was just excited to eat lunch with his camp­ing tool that he also used as a Cub Scout. He took it every­where him, no one con­sid­ered it a weapon, & he was inno­cent in his inten­tion. I believe there needs to be under­stand­ing in what should con­sti­tute a real threat under zero tol­er­ance poli­cies.  By putting non-threats into the same cat­e­gory as real & seri­ous threats chil­dren are being given the mes­sage that excite­ment over camp­ing is the equiv­a­lent of plot­ting mur­der.  That prob­a­bly seems silly to us adults, but remem­ber these are really young kids who are still try­ing to make sense of the world around them. It’s a con­fus­ing mes­sage soci­o­log­i­cally & psychologically.

And the con­se­quences that this boy could have as a result of going through this process are life chang­ing. He has been removed from school, his friends dur­ing the day, & labeled a “threat.” His mother has even started a web­site to help him: Helpzachary.com

Here’s a story from the Today Show about this case:

Is it just me or is this an extreme pun­ish­ment for him? I can­not imag­ine how my own 6 year old would feel if this hap­pened to him.

Tagged as: boy suspended, family, kids, media, unitended consequences