One of the things homeschoolers hear often is that we are sheltered to the point of being unable to deal with reality.

Really? By what measure? Because these don’t seem like examples of people who have a grasp on reality:

• A girl was yelled out by her teacher in front of her classmates for having a piece of paper folded into the shape of a gun. A piece of paper she was trying to discretely rid herself of until some little fink ratted her out.
• A school confiscated a child’s “insensitive” cupcakes because they were decorated with little green army men.
• A six-year-old boy was suspended for forming a deadly finger gun and saying “pow.”
• A kindergarten girl was suspended for threatening an assault with a Hello Kitty bubble gun. The incident was called a “terrorist threat” and the 5-year-old was threatened with jail.
• A young man had his mental state questioned by a teacher for showing a friend a picture of his bb gun. Not the actual gun. Not actually a gun. But a picture of a bb gun.
• Another young man was suspended for having an image of a gun on his laptop.
• A ten-year-old was arrested for bringing a toy gun to school.
• And the latest insanity: Some poor kid was suspended for biting a pastry into the shape of a gun. And then they offered counseling to the students traumatized by the event.

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This seems to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, because a Maryland state senator has introduced a bill “prohibiting a principal from suspending or expelling a student who brings to school or possesses on school property a picture of a gun, a computer image of a gun, a facsimile of a gun, or any other object that resembles a gun but serves another purpose;”  Gee, ya think?

As Glenn Reynolds wrote in USA Today, “When schools and teachers react hysterically to such non-threats, they’re telling us one of two things: Either that they lack the ability to respond realistically to events or that they recognize that there’s not any sort of threat, but deliberately overreact in order to stigmatize even the idea of guns. The first is educational malpractice; the second is educational malpractice mixed with abuse of power.”

You know how you teach a toddler not to touch a hot stove? You make a big deal and say emphatically, “No! Hot! It will hurt you!” When they approach a power outlet, you loudly proclaim, “STOP! Don’t touch!”  Now as adults, we get that this overreaction to the semblance of guns is nonsense.  But a 7-year-old?  “Did you hear about Billy? He got suspended! And they say he’s going to jail!” *whispers* “He had a picture of a gun.” And so little Billy is now branded as dangerous by his peers and the kids learn the lesson that guns are evil.

In an excellent post on the goals of public education, the Deputy Head Mistress quotes Donald Erickson, Associate Professor of Education,

“The chief enigma.., concerns the fact that the child does not choose for himself, particularly at the elementary level, the life orientation to which he will be molded. Given the power of culture, there is no method I know of to permit the young unbiased choice…THE PROBLEM IS ONE OF DECIDING WHO SHALL CHOOSE…”. (emphasis mine)

The overreaction is not because institutions are gun-shy (pardon the pun) because of the horror of Newtown.  The overreaction is deliberate. It’s yelling “NO!” at the toddler approaching the power outlet. The adults roll our eyes, proclaim indignantly, and write snarky blog posts, but that doesn’t stop the kids from getting the message: “Guns are bad, and people who own guns are evil.”

Crazy like a fox.