Six-year-old Cub Scout Zachary Christie was suspended from his 1st grade class in Delaware’s Christina School District for bringing a camping utensil to school, CBS News reported October 13.

The young scout brought the jackknife-like eating utensil to school because he wanted to eat lunch with it. The utensil includes a foldaway knife, fork, and spoon convenient for use when camping. Zachary uses the implement to eat meals at home and simply wanted to do the same at school.

“It’s just a cool camping utensil,” the six-year-old replied when asked why he brought it to school. This wasn’t good enough for school officials, who immediately jumped to enforce the zero-tolerance policy for bringing weapons to school.

Zachary willingly gave the utensil to the teacher who asked for it, but he was not even brandishing it as weapon at the time. Debbie Christie, Zachary’s mother, told The Early Show on CBS, “He wasn’t waving it around. He told her [the teacher] that he was taking it to lunch.”

None of this mattered though, and Zachary was suspended. He would have faced 45 days forced attendance at a reform school, but his mother and her fiancé have chosen to homeschool him for that time instead.

Zero-tolerance policies were instituted in many school districts in the wake of the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings. Strict enforcement of the rules is intended to avoid the chance that officials might appear to be showing bias or discrimination.

“There is no parent who wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife,” said George Evans, the president of the school district board.

On the other hand, State Representative Teresa L. Schooley (D) wrote to the disciplinary committee to request that the members “consider the situation, get all the facts, find out about Zach and his family and then act with common sense for the well-being of this child.” Sending the otherwise well-behaved youngster to reform school where he would be exposed to trouble-making students certainly wouldn’t be a common-sense action.

After a third-grade girl was expelled for bringing a knife to cut her birthday cake, a law was passed to adjust punishments to the severity of the incident. Unfortunately, this dealt only with expulsions, not suspensions, which is what Zachary has been given. Schooley has sponsored a bill to give districts more leeway to tailor punishments to specific circumstances.

AP noted that “hundreds of people” are expected to attend a school board meeting on the evening of October 13 “to object to the suspension of 6-year-old Zachary Christie from Downes Elementary School for bringing the camping utensil from home.” Schooley sees that the blind enforcement of rules “has gotten really crazy. It’s ridiculous. There are going to be hundreds of people at the school board meeting. It's going to be a circus.”

This is the craziness that ensues when government plays the nanny who must protect us from ourselves. Students could just as easily put each other’s eyes out with a sharpened pencil as with a camping utensil, and the pencil poking would probably also carry with it the charge of attempted lead poisoning.

For now, though, Zachary misses his friends and wishes he could get back to school. He has been punished, essentially, for simply living out the Scout motto of “Be prepared!” Wise beyond his years, he knows that bringing a real weapon to school with the intent to do harm would be wrong.

“I agree that they shouldn’t bring dangerous weapons to school but I don’t think the punishment should be this bad,” Zachary declared. “It’s not fair.”

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Rains said:

	Human Any parent that sends God's gifts into the Public Fool Syatem has already drunk the socialist kool-aid. Home Educate!
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October 13, 2009
Votes: +1

RP said:

	It takes a village to brainwash a child A defender of public schools might be quick to point out that pencils contain graphite (carbon) and not lead. Not recognizing the sarcasm intended, they would have zero tolerance and discard the entire article for being inaccurate and misinformed. Six year old Zachary has more common sense then the entire adult school board.
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October 13, 2009
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DDW said:

	Common sense Is precisely what is missing. And don't look for it to reappear any time soon, particularly not in the government education/indoctrination system. I hope all the parents that attend the meeting bring pocket pen knives and swiss army knives (things that almost every boy used to carry when I was in grade school, and yet we all survived).
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October 13, 2009
Votes: +2