Here's one for ya! and people wonder why the citizens of the USA don't want the government in their lives! Is there any IW members in the great State of La. that can shed some more light on this story? You just got to love this, IF it is true as writen, or even close to true, I would suggest you consider moving to another State
http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html
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Wednesday, December 8, 2004
GOVERNMENT SCHOOL IDIOCY
A government school in New Orleans has suspended an 8-year-old girl .... 8 years old .... for nine days. What did she do? She brought about 30 "Jell-O Shots" to school for her classmates. She says her mother made them and suggested that she take them to school to pass out to her friends. Now ... admittedly ... her mother does work in a bar, and her mother does make Jell-O Shots laced with alcohol to sell to bar patrons. There is no evidence that the Jell-O Shots she made for her daughter contained any alcohol. It doesn't matter though. The girl was suspended anyway ... because the Jell-O Shots are a "look-alike" drug. They're going to test the little goodies to see if there's any booze there. If there is booze, it's not the girl who should be punished .. it's her bar-maid mother. Jail time would be appropriate. The school says it doesn't matter. Booze or not, the suspension stands.
The issue here is the moronic zero-tolerance policy they're following at this school. Somewhere along the road of life I got this strange idea that schools should prepare your children for life in the wide wide world. Part of that preparation would be teaching our children basic reasoning skills. Most situations don't present themselves in stark blacks or whites. Most of the times you have shades of gray. How in the world do you teach our children how to deal with real world situations with artificial zero-tolerance policies? Can you imagine these zero-tolerance policies being applied to the real outside-of-government schools world? This girl is being suspended under a policy of zero-tolerance for "look alike" drugs. Let's apply that to bank robbers. If you just look like a bank robber you go to jail. It doesn't matter what you actually are. It doesn't matter what you actually did or are planning to do. It only matters what you look like. Look like a bank robber, look like a drug dealer, look like a gang-banger and you go to jail. In this type of world who would we have left to play professional basketball?
Perhaps the zero-tolerance policies are an indication of the trust in the judgment and decision-making capabilities of our school administrators. In that case, I could see your point.