No, really, don't play soldiers, kids.

 

It seems this title from last Thursday was a touch premature.
Less than a week later comes the news that school kids are being disciplined for forming the shape of a gun with their fingers.
We used to do that sometimes, but cap-guns that made a loud bang without actually shooting anything were easy to get. Who remembers those rifles with a cork in the end attached with string? You'd bung in the cork and crank it up, pull the trigger and the cork made a 'pop' when it came out. better than cap-guns, which went through rolls of caps at a pocket-money-depleting rate. I had a double-barrelled cork-popper in the style of a shotgun. Not one person was even slightly disturbed by this.
Now there are machine-guns that fire foam darts. If a child took one of those to school they'd probably be crucified at the school gates as a warning to the others.
Fortunately the parents deem this as going to far (about bloody time too) but I don't expect the school to back down. Many teachers have reached the point where they know less than the children they are teaching, and the head teachers and governors take pains to get rid of any teacher who atually knows anything. They can't have intelligent teachers in their schools because as bosses, they have to be the most intelligent ones around. Therefore they only want staff who come somewhere below sea-squirts on the IQ scale.
It's not the teachers at fault. It's those who control who gets to be on the staff and who gets to stay. As always, the Righteous remain behind the scenes and let their frontline staff take all the blame.
The school has a different tale to tell:
'The issue here was about hand gestures being made in the shape of a gun towards members of staff which is understandably unacceptable, particularly in the classroom.'
If you had tried that on any of the teachers when I was at school, they would have responded with a blast of withering sarcasm that would have made you look a total prat in front of the rest of the class. You wouldn't have done it again.
So is that what the parents were told?
'We were told to reprimand our son for this and to tell him he cannot play "guns" anymore.
'The teacher said the boys should be reprimanded for threatening behaviour which would not be tolerated at the school.'
It appears not. Once more the Righteous try to squirm out of their actions and are caught out. I cannot imagine any teacher feeling threatened by a child pointing at them but then, teachers used to be able and willing to do something about it.
To be honest, I am surprised at the parents' reaction. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's a refreshing change from the usual hand-wringers who believe that a child pointing fingers is a sign of a future serial killer. I am surprised that didn't happen this time. Perhaps, at last, the camel's load is approaching that final straw? It's a very, very big load now.
Nuneaton MP Marcus Jones branded the ruling 'political correctness gone mad'.
That old chestnut. When will these people realise that political correctness has not 'gone mad'? It's doing exactly what it was designed to do.
It was mad from the start.

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