How Absurd Have Some School Bureaucrats Become?

The folks who administer and teach in our schools have a tough job. No doubt about it. And those who do their jobs right, successfully juggling concerns for kids' education and their safety, deserve our support and as many attaboys as we can give them.

Then there are the petty, the foolish, the hysterical, and the absurd: the bureaucrats who value their image and the appearance of political correctness over everything else.

An example just this week would be the principal of a Mesa, Arizona elementary school who asked a police officer-parent to stop wearing his uniform and gun to pick up his children at school because it scared some of the other kids (http://www.lawofficer.com/video/news/arizona-officer-asked-not-come).

And the teachers at a middle school in Connecticut who call the Geico "hump day" commercial  "disruptive." (http://www.kctv5.com/story/23593314/some-teachers-say-geico-hump-day-commerical-is-disruptive-in-classrooms).

Match these examples with all of the others...every school district that has expelled children for pretending their hands are guns and going "bang" at another child. Or the district that fired a teacher because she revealed her husband threatened her.

Or the high school in my own backyard where administrators produced a list of "inappropriate words" that should not be used by those of us invited to speak at a school-wide creativity event. Among the banned words? "Gun," "gangs" and "murder." After all, if you don't talk about such things, they'll never become a problem, right?

 The Mesa school incident in particular has me shaking my head. A child reportedly told his parents a man with a gun was at school. The parents communicated that the principal. The principal called the officer. Considering that children discussing what they saw could have twisted the story any number of ways, and another child could have reported misinformation to already fearful parents who then overreacted...the principal's request is beyond absurd and borders on the hysterical.

Schools are supposed to be teaching students to think. To confront problems and come up with logical, reasoned solutions.

It appears some school administrators have flunked that lesson.