A 13-year-old boy has been suspended for three days by an Arizona public school because he sketched a picture that resembled a gun, something school officials said they “absolutely” believed could pose a threat.
According to a report by KPHO-TV in Phoenix, it’s not the type of greeting the Mosteller family expected when they moved from Colorado Springs to Chandler, Ariz., a few weeks ago.
“My son is a very good boy,” Paul Mosteller told the television station. “He doesn’t get into trouble. There was nothing on the paper that would signify that it was a threat of any form.”
The principal at Payne Junior High School kept the actual drawing, and officials with the Chandler Unified School District declined to release any information about the situation.
Here’s the drawing:
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That’s not a gun. That’s a crude representation of a street. But even if it’d been a spot-on accurate depiction of an AK-47, would it matter? It’s just a drawing. In my middle school kids routinely wrote stories about their experiences hunting and sport shooting. They even...gasp...brought in pictures of themselves holding rifles and shotguns!
Next thing you know schools will be suspending kids for thinking about guns.
But you know what would stop inanity like this? School vouchers. I’ll bet this school’s administrators wouldn’t be so quick to mete out suspensions for things as minor as drawings of guns if the parents could just pull their kid out and go down the street to the nearest private school.