Keep violence out of our schools. W ell, yes. Keep violence out of our schools. They don t really beat the shit out of each other. I n punishing children under weapons regulations for carrying toys that in some way simulate weapons, school administrators totemize the appearance of a thing as if it was the thing itself like a bunch of overeducated voodoo priests sticking pins in doll representations of their ex-spouses.
T hat s a valuable lesson, but one better learned in other ways.
T he zero tolerance weapons rules veer into thought control in odd ways, too. Think of little Jeffrey Parks, expelled not just for possessing his tiny piece of plastic, but for apparently pointing it at a friend. There s no threat the damned thing isn t going to go off, after all, nor could a reasonable person feel threatened. But Jeffrey s principal seems set on what he was thinking , and what pointing that little piece of plastic represented . D amian Galindo won through, too, after his mother showed school authorities a little orange-tipped gun that couldn t be mistaken by a blind man for an implement of destruction.