“Six-year-old Zachary Christie was so excited to become a Cub Scout that he brought his camping utensil to school. The tool serves as a spoon, a fork and a knife, and Zachary wanted to use it at lunch.”

I just read the above headline as I was surfing this morning. Sounds like a cute story, right?

It turns out that six-year-old Zachary was violating his school's zero-tolerance policy on weapons. And get this: he has been suspended and ordered to attend his district’s reform school for 45 days. The article says that his “parents insist their son did not intend to hurt anyone, and they are fighting to overturn the ruling.”

Quoting further from the article: "Zachary wears a suit and tie some days to school by his own choice because he takes school so seriously," Zachary's mother, Debbie Christie, told the New York Times "He is not some sort of threat to his classmates."

The school district’s statement? “Rules are rules.”

This article infuriates me. If there was anything I could do to help overturn this, I would do it. Maybe this blog will help. If I were Zachary’s parents, and this ruling is not overturned, there is NO WAY my kid is going to reform school. This is a sweet, innocent little kid whose only crime was to be excited about being a Cub Scout.

What is our education system coming to?

I call ‘bulls***’ on this and every other asinine ruling that comes down from these tinhorn bureaucracies.

It’s just like the crap we all go through at the airport. You CAN profile people successfully. Making an old, non-Muslim lady who can barely walk go through an intense search at the airport is ridiculous and shouldn’t be tolerated in a great society like ours. Are all Muslims terrorists? Of course not. Are all terrorists Muslim? I’m guessing about 99.99999%.

Turning a sweet six-year-old kid into a criminal is just as bad, if not worse. If you can’t tell the difference between an elementary kid who is a threat and one who is not, you shouldn’t be in education. Get a job that doesn’t require you to make subtle (or in this case, obvious) distinctions about someone’s intent.

If and when I find out the contact info for this kid’s school district, I will post it here. If you know, let me know.

These people need to be held accountable for this absolutely stupid decision.

Hopefully they will change their mind. And then change careers.

UPDATE:  The powers that be did the right thing.  No reform school for Zachary.  Now to review these zero tolerance policies....