Zero intelligence

[Chris Keen]

I bet she packed her lunch, and just thought I'm going to need a knife for this. Maybe her mom even packed it. I don't think steak is a menu item for most elementry schools.

Apparently you've never had the Salisbury Steak they serve in grade school. You DO need a knife to cut that stuff. It's alot like rubber.

I think the girl was very intelligent. She knew that the "plastic serrated" knives they hand out at school are crap, and she decided to bring one that would do the job.

She should be commended or promoted or something, for using her head more than the rest of the sheep. Common sense however, did not prevail. In this story, common sense was trumped by 'a fear of what they do not understand'.

BTW Jake makes a great point, but until we can get people to realize that there are more deaths each year from vehical accidents, than gun-shot wounds: making the automobile a weapon of deadly force ........ we must continue to endure their stupidity.

Our school district is actually fairly cool - their policy makes allowances for accidently or innocently having a small knife with no intent of harm. Someday I'll post a

picture of my youngest's third grade Christmas project - he brought home a plain round cardboard circle to make a wreath. We hot glued Winchester AA [red] and

Remington STS [green] 12 gauge empties on it and filled the spaces with red and green .410's and polished .45's. As I dropped him off, I realized that there could be

a problem but the principal thought it was cool. His teacher liked it so much that she hung it on the door in a place of honor and one of the other teachers told us

he copied the idea! They're not all bad.

I'm curious to know what school district you're talking about.

[et45]

Things like that make me glad I don't have kids.

[RePete]

They took the steak knife away while she was eating, then they her away.

I wonder if they let her finish lunch? If not, the parents should be over the school board like white on rice.

The height of stupidity. Is there no common sense anymore?

[J-Ho]

I'm only 32 so it wasn't so long ago I was in school. We had a teacher bring a sword to school. He was into civil war re-enactments. Everyone including other teachers thought is was pretty cool. I guess if you bring a 140 year old sword it's OK. This was the shop teacher, and as we all know there is absolutely nothing in shop class that could be considered dangerous.

[North]

When I was in tenth grade one of the seniors made a small working cannon in machine shop. As I remember it had about a 2 foot "barrel" around 4 inch diameter with about 1 inch bore. I remember they took it out back and test fired it.

We also made potato guns, now that was a hoot.

town of 250 people with 20 kids in the gradating class. Northern Minnesota. 1987ish.

[AikiDale]

Update:

OCALA, Fla. -- A 10-year old Ocala girl brought her lunch to school and a small kitchen knife to cut it. She now faces a felony charge after being arrested. The school and the sheriff's office disagree on the reason for the arrest.

School officials say the 5th grader was brown-bagging it. She brought a piece of steak for her lunch, but she also brought a steak knife. That's when deputies were called.

It happened in the cafeteria at Sunrise Elementary School. The 10-year-old used the knife to cut the meat.

"She did not use it inappropriately. She did not threaten anyone with it. She didn't pull it out and brandish it. Nothing of that nature," explained Marion County School Spokesman Kevin Christian.

But a couple of teachers took the utensil and called the sheriff. When deputies arrived, they were unable to get the child's parents on the phone, so they arrested her and took her to the county's juvenile assessment center.

"And we didn't handcuff her or treat her like a criminal. But, we took her to the assessment center to be assessed," said Capt. James Pogue, Marion County Sheriff's Office.

School officials said it doesn't matter what the knife was being used for. They said they had no choice.

"Anytime there's a weapon on campus, yes, we have to report it and we aggressively report it because we don't want to take any chances, regardless," Christian said.

But the sheriff's office said the extreme measures in what some may say was a harmless incident had to do with school policy, not theirs.

"But once we're notified, we have to take some type of action," Pogue explained.

The student now faces a felony charge for the possession of a weapon on school property and the principal suspended her for ten days. The parents of the girl could not be reached for comment.

The sheriff's office has turned the case over to the State Attorney's Office.

Copyright 2007 by wftv.com.

[ChrisStock]

If the State Atty actually attempts to prosecute this, I'll expend a bit of energy on a phone call, believe me. What freaking idiocy. We have asshats incarcerated for conspiring to blow things up here, and they are worried about a 10 year old with a steak knife.

Mumbly Peg indeed...and with a Case knife. It made it much more interesting than playing it with a pencil.

I actually lived in Ocala for a year back in the mid 90's. Just a little backwater city... 40,000 or so folks, most of the red neck variety. They must have had a shortage of teachers and brought some in from out of state with all of their lack of common sense and egregious stupidity.

That poor girl...probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer so to speak, but to be force fed an unhealthy dose of public official stupidity is going to leave a mark.

A Shamed Florida Native

[racerba]

They have to ask themselves:

At which point does a tool become a weapon? Is not a steak knife a tool used for eating? Should we go back to the stone ages where tools were not invented? Are the invention of tools that bad for the human race?