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Well, I'm probably dealing with an urban legend, but I saw this in the Wahington post, the AP wire, and CNN, so it probably is true. What has happened to the common sense in our society?

An 11 year old honor-roll girl was SUSPENDED for drawing a doodle stick figure of the teacher with an arrow through the head. She did not turn it in, it was in her binder - just a doodle! This is bad behavior, and the teacher should have scolded, given detention, called the parents, or had her write "I will not . . " 1000 times or something, but what did the school do? Called it "TERRORIST ACTIVITY" and suspended the little girl from school. What??

The only thing I have to add to the obvious stupidity of this, if we do have all the facts, is that I found the details on the superintendent who defended this as standard procedure, no big deal, he said, in effect.

Glenn Smartschan, Superintendent
Mount Lebanon School District,
7 Horsman Drive,
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15228-1107.
E-mail: gfs@bbs.mtlebanon.k12.pa.us

An e-mail or two might show our opinion.

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HERE IS THE NEWS CLIP:

Girl Suspended in Doodle of Teacher

MOUNT LEBANON, Pa. (AP) - A school suspended an 11-year-old girl for drawing two teachers with arrows through their heads, saying the stick figures were more death threat than doodle.

Becca Johnson, an honor-roll sixth-grader at Mellon Middle School, drew the picture on the back of a vocabulary test on which she had gotten a D.

"That's my way of saying I'm angry," Becca said, adding she meant no harm to the teachers.

The stick figures, on a crudely drawn gallows with arrows in their heads, had the names of Becca's teacher and a substitute teacher written underneath. Another teacher spotted the doodle in the girl's binder Tuesday and reported it, prompting the three-day suspension.

Becca's parents, Philip and Barbara Johnson, denied the school's contention the drawings were "terrorist threats."

"She had done poorly on a test that was handed back to her. We've always told her that you can't take your feelings out on your teacher, so write about it or draw it, as a catharsis," Barbara Johnson said.

She accused the school of applying a zero-tolerance policy that "does away with due process and inflicts a penalty without a hearing or investigation."

The district said its zero-tolerance policy applies only to gun or drug possession, and denied that no investigation was done.

"All I can say is that when we have taken action related to the activities of students in the schools, we have done so after a thorough investigation," Mount Lebanon School District Superintendent Glenn Smartschan said.

2002-05-02 14:48:35 GMT